Hands Off Hinchingbrooke Press Release
‘Campaigners brand takeover plans as dangerous and short sighted’
Embargo: Immediate
The local community campaign group Hands Off Hinchingbrooke has branded both trust boards dangerous and short sighted after takeover plans of Hinchingbrooke Hospital are set to go ahead.
Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust unanimously voted in favour of the take over of Hinchingbrooke hospital on Tuesday 27th September 2016. Today (Thursday 29th September) the trust board at Hinchingbrooke Healthcare NHS Trust also voted in favour of the takeover which is set to happen from April 1, 2017.
The plans which could see services such as Accident & Emergency, Urgent Care, Haematology and Maternity downgraded or closed as the result of a non-resident board taking decisions which will not affect their lives or the lives of their loved ones. Both boards are not thinking about patient safety and the plans are ill-thought.
Speaking after the Hinchingbrooke Hospital board meeting, Secretary of Hands Off Hinchingbrooke, Daniel Laycock said “Both boards have prepared an ill-thought plan, this takeover will endeavour to downgrade or close services and even quite possibly close the hospital all together.
Within the Full Business Case both boards have branded Hinchingbrooke Hospital as an ambitious organisation with no chance of succeeding with the financial plan and have praised Peterborough Hospital as a potential hospital to do great things.
Both boards have also stated that they will save £9m from back office and corporate but from 12 mergers that have taken place across the country during the last 5 years this has been inaccurate and shows incompetency. This would suggest that there is no evidence to support their claim that a takeover would be beneficial for everyone.
Both trust boards haven’t taken into consideration setting-up of an “Integrated Healthcare System for Huntingdonshire (”Primary Care, Secondary (Hospita) and Older Peoples Care) as suggested by The Kings Fund Report (Foundation Trust and NHS Trust Mergers Report). This report recommends, “placed based systems of care, with the emphasis on collaboration across organisational and service boundaries to meet the needs of a defined population (such as Huntingdonshire) so as to ensure financial and clinical sustainability.
We are calling for Huntingdonshire District Council and Cambridgeshire Couny Council to start a Judical Review into the takeover of Hinchingbrooke Healthcare NHS Trust by Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
We are urging resident’s from Huntingdonshire, Peterborough and South Lincolnshire to stand against the takeover so that services across all three sites are not downgraded or lost entirely and campaign with us on the streets, meetings across all three counties to fight for our NHS. The NHS is facing unprecedented attacks by means of mergers plus the Sustainability and Transformation Plan which the merger is being forced through by NHS Improvement. These are very difficult and challenging times but we must stand together as a community so that vital services such as A&E, maternity, children services or other departments that could be centralised, are not downgraded or lost altogether. This is happening up and down the country, we as a society and community from different backgrounds, countries, race, religions, beliefs, stand united in our fight to ensure that our hospital will be publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable to all who use the world’s greatest health service.”