It has been reported that Lance McCarthy, the CEO of Hinchingbrooke Hospital has intimated that Hands off Hinchingbrooke Campaign Group are scaremongering. Well – lets examine some of the facts.
In his public consultation Mr McCarthy has regularly stated that their will be no loss of services at Hinchingbrooke Hospital and indeed expects some enhancements to some clinical services.
We understand some of the Senior Executives of the Hinchingbrooke Hospital Board have been involved with or contributed to the Sustainability Transformation Plan recently released by the Cambridgeshire Commissioning Group.
The Cambridgeshire Commissioning Group provide the footprint for the provision of Health and Social Care for the County within the confines of its budget restrictions.
The Cambridgeshire Commissioning Group is the most financially challenged commissioning Group in the whole of England and must find £504m of savings by 2020. This equates to over £125m every year for the next 4 years, yet they have not released details of where these savings are to be made and so far have not consulted with the public over where savings are to be achieved. Why? What are they hiding from us?
The Cambridge Commissioning Group has not yet agreed it’s footprint as no decisions have apparently been made over the three Fenland centres. How can you have a Plan and Budget when you as yet don’t know what you are doing?
Mr McCarthy is probably one of the few people fully aware of the impact of these savings which are savage and which will impact heavily on Health and Social Care provision throughout the County including Huntingdonshire.
So what does this mean for Hinchingbrooke Hospital? It is highly likely that A&E will be rebranded as an Urgent Care Centre (UCC). This may in turn result in Hinchingbrooke losing its status as a District General Hospital.
So residents of Huntingdonshire – Do you think we are scaremongering?; or merely trying to bring you facts as they become known, or our predictions/opinions on how we see Hinchingbrooke Hospital in the Future.
Our sole aim is to fight to retain services at Hinchingbrooke Hospital as outlined in the Full Business Case, and to inform you our residents if they are not.