I thought it may useful to provide some context around NHS funding. We are spending more on the NHS every year with a guaranteed increase of funding above the level of inflation. Set against this, the cost of health care is increasing faster than other costs with new cures and treatments coming online. These new cures and treatments are welcome but all come at a cost. The local NHS (covering Southend, Basildon and Chelmsford Hospitals) spends more than £100m over the money it has coming in. Clearly this is not sustainable and we quite rightly want even better health care for ourselves and our families. With this backdrop in mind, the Essex Success Regime was set up.
I have met with the Minister at the Department of Health on two occasions to discuss the Essex Success Regime and I recently met with the Chairman of Southend Hospital and the CEO of Basildon Hospital. The three hospitals are working together to reduce cost and improve services. Working together means that staff can learn from one another and share best practices. Seeing the area as a whole means hospitals can further specialise offering better, higher quality care. This is the case with Southend’s Cancer unit which leads in cancer treatment for the area, the burns unit leads in Chelmsford and the cardiac unit leads in Basildon. Sending people direct to the hospitals with these specialist problems has worked well. Work is underway to look at further specialisms and I support this – it allows for better outcomes with procedures being provided by the best specialists.
There will also be a review of which services are provided at the 3 accident and emergency departments – all of which will continue and none of which will be closed and all of which will continue to operate a ‘turn up in an emergency’ system. The volume of patients going through Southend A&E has increased rapidly over the last 5 years and the current building and staffing is not designed to cope with these numbers. Improvements have been made but much more is needed. One of the options proposed sees ambulances travelling to A&E would be routed to one of the three hosipitals with that hospital having a much higher level of 24 hour cover in terms of technical staff as well as doctors. This is needed to get the best, fastest specialist care. Getting to a local hospital quicker seems better than travelling past one A&E to get to another but this is not the case if the place you are going to has a better, more diverse groups of specialists to treat you. Providing this new higher level of care is currently not available at any of the three hospitals.
I think it is important to reassure you that any proposed changes to services must involve public consultation and in particular detailed planning with the ambulance service allowing for full consideration of resources and journey times by ambulance. To ensure all decision makers are aware of the paramount need for strong consultation. In addition, I think we will need a new bus route between the three hospitals for staff, discharged patients and visitors and I have discussed the possibility of this route with Arriva.
Once the consultation is launched I would urge you, and all local residents, to participate and ensure your voice is heard and your opinions taken into consideration.