Showing posts with label Keep NHS Public. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keep NHS Public. Show all posts

Friday 15 June 2012

Campaign launched to save Central Middlesex Hospital

The overnight closure of the Accident and Emergency service at Park Royal's Central Middlesex Hospital is likely to be the first step in running down the hospital and its eventual closure a Harlesden meeting was told last week.

North West London NHS is currently consulting on an amalgamation of Ealing, Central Middlesex and Northwick Park hospitals and it looks as if Harlesden and Stonebridge, the poorest areas in Brent may lose their local hospital and have to travel to A and E at Northwick Park, despite very poor public transport links. It is likely that A and E at Ealing, Charing Cross and Hammersmith may also close.

John Lister addresses the meeting
 John Lister, from the London Health Emergency has been commissioned by Ealing, Brent and Harrow Trade Union Councils, to write a report on the likely impact of the cost-cutting changes. The report will be available soon and a condensed version will be distributed as a tabloid newspaper.

Lister said that the pattern was one of a gradual reduction of different services, starting with A and E, eventually leaving the hospital as an nearly empty shell, which is then closed because people are not using it and nurses and doctors are reluctant to apply for jobs there,

With £314m cuts to be made by NW London NHS by 2015 the hospital closures are just the beginning. Stressing that decisions are being made in order to balance the books, and not on clinical grounds, Lister said that 1,750 jobs will go in the near future, of which 1,000 are clinical.

The aim is to direct patients to 'lower cost' settings, including the setting in which you die. That setting may be your front room and the carer yourself. Jargon such as 'pathway redesign' and 'corporate efficiency' conceal an overall strategy to reduce the number of patients seeking treatment and to restrict access to expensive treatments. The target is to reduce emergency cases annually to a level equivalent to 391 hospital beds and a 22% cut in out-patient appointments.

A further aim is to introduce private providers into the service so that the NHS, the largest public sector organisation, is open to exploitation for profit. The NHS will be left with A & E and maternity services, which are 'too dangerous' for private companies but 'any qualified provider' will offer other services (Virgin, Sainsbury's) undermining pay structures and qualification systems. Lister stressed that with PCTs due to go,GP commissioners will be left holding the baby, but wouldn't have been responsible for the changes that have been made.

John Lister urged local people to use the consultation period to build a movement against the local changes AND against the privatisation of the NHS, lobbying GPs, MPs and local councillors.

Candy Unwin urges broad-based campaigning
 Candy Unwin from Camden Keep Our NHS Public recounted campaign success in saving Whittington Hospital . Different hospitals, cross party and non-party political groups, trades unions, tenants and unions had come together in a united campaign. She said that 1 in 6 Labour members of the house of Lords and 1 in 4 Tories get money from private companies and that 30 MPs get funding from Virgin, one of the main bidders.

Phil Rose, a regional official from UNITE, said that the changes would result in high quality provision for private patients and low quality for the rest of us. He said that one thing standing in the way of privatisation was NHS workers' terms and conditions which the private sector cannot match. The pensions changes was an attempt to reduce these conditions to make the sector attractive to the private sector. He urged support for the '68 is too late' campaign on retirement age and drew parallels with the creeping  privatisation of schools. Job cuts, down-grading of jobs and pay cuts were all in the offing.

In a powerful speech a member of the Methodist Church spoke about Harlesden being a poor area and needing and valuing its local hospital and pledged herself to make people aware of the situation. She said 'Some people are going to die because of these changes'.

 I spoke about the link between health and schools as not being just in terms of the privatisation issue, but also that schools were frequent users of A and E when children have accidents and reliant on accessible emergency treatment in incidents such as that at Chalkhill Primary (see below). With its many railway lines, the North Circular Road, Wembley Stadium, industry at Park Royal and Neasden, there was a risk of a major incident and we needed accessible emergency services to cope. Added to that, although things were quieter at present, there was the possibility of violence and the need for a hospital experiences, as Central Middlesex is, in the treatment of gun shot and knife injuries.

Graham Durham's suggestion of a march in September from Harlesden to Central Middlesex Hospital under the banner of Save Central Middlesex Hospital, Save North West London Health Services, was enthusiastically endorsed by the meeting as was a message of solidarity to doctors taking action on Thursday.

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Fears over NHS services if hospital trusts merge

I have received this public statement on behalf of Brent, Ealing and Harrow Trades Union Councils

Your readers may be aware that a consultation is currently underway over the proposed merger of the NW London and Ealing Hospital trusts. The proposal is that this merger should be agreed by July of this year.
We are seriously concerned that this merger of the trusts, supposedly on financial grounds, will lead to a reduction in NHS services in Brent, Ealing and Harrow. Despite stressing that the consultation is about the merger of the trusts and not about the re-organisation of services, the consultation meetings have been told that this could lead to a “rationalisation” of services, particularly in the light of the government’s insistence that the NHS is required to make £20 billion of cuts.

We believe this merger would lead to a reduction of local services and people having to make often long and difficult journeys across West and North-West London. Already the consultation process seems more a P.R. exercise for a decision that has already been made.The bigger merged trust will be even less accountable and responsive to the needs of local people than the services are now.

We have already seen the closure of the Accident and Emergency Department at Central Middlesex Hospital at night, with growing expectation that this “temporary” closure will become permanent. There are fears that one of the 3 district general hospitals involved (Ealing, Central Middlesex and Northwick Park) will close. Such moves transfer services from where they are needed to where it is financially most convenient.

As secretaries of the Trades Union Councils in the 3 boroughs involved, we intend to closely monitor what is happening, and to campaign vigorously to defend our health service in all its aspects.

To this end we will shortly be convening co-ordinated meetings in all 3 boroughs to which we will invite health campaigners, NHS trades unionists and everyone who relies on the NHS to establish such a campaign.
Any readers wishing to be involved or to know more, can contact:

Brent: Ben Rickman ben.rickman@gmail.com
Ealing: Eve Turner eveturner@btopenworld.com
Harrow: John Rattray johnprattray@btinternet.com

Friday 9 December 2011

Brent needs a properly resourced Central Middlesex Hospital

Is Central Middlesex being reduced to a 'poly clinic'?
 The possible merger of the Ealing Hospital and North West London Hospitals Trust is being discussed in a series of meetings in Ealing, Brent and Harrow but anxiety about the future of Central Middlesex (commonly known locally as 'Park Royal') Hospital is likely to be a big issue.

A meeting of 100 people at Ealing Town Hall yesterday provoked a lively discussion with many people concerned about the running down of Central Middlesex Hospital as well as the merger itself. Hospital administrators when challenged admitted there had not been consultation over the withdrawal of overnight Accident and Emergency Services at Central Middlesex and said the decision had been made on 'clinical grounds'. They said they hope to reopen the facility soon. They also stated that an NHS bid to run the service had been rejected in favour of one from Care UK.

The gradual running down of a hospital serving a deprived area such as South Brent/Park Royal is causing considerable concern. Health in poorer neighbourhoods is already an issue: there is heavy pollution from the North Circular Road affecting many local children, possibilities of traffic accidents on the North Circular a higher possibility of gun and knife wounds and more  illness associated with alcohol and drug abuse.

Families and individuals lacking cars to transport them to Ealing or Northwick Park would have a difficult journey to the hospitals or may have to resort to calling an ambulance. More and longer ambulance journeys seem a distinct possibility.

 We have to be concerned about whether a reduced Central Middlesex would be able to cope with a .major incident' in the area.

Central Middlesex has a history of being responsive to the needs of the local population and was instrumental in getting sickle cell anaemia recognised as an illness and pioneering treatment.  There are further specific illnesses in our loaclity, such as TB,  which require such an approach.




BBC REPORT

Make your voice count – LINks will be holding events to seek views from its members and the public regarding the proposed merger


LINks across Brent, Ealing and Harrow will be holding events to seek the view of LINks members and the public regarding the proposed merger of Ealing Hospital NHS Trust and The North West London Hospitals NHS Trust. Representatives from the Trusts will give a presentation and be available to answers questions. The events are as follows:

BRENT LINk: Monday 12 December 2011. Registration and light refreshments from 6.30pm. Event starts at 7pm and will close at approximately 9pm. Sattavis Patidar Centre, Forty Avenue at the junction with The Avenue, Wembley Park, Middlesex HA9 9PE. Places are limited. If you would like to attend, please call the Brent LINk Team on 020 8965 0309 or email: brentlink@hestia.org

HARROW LINk: Thursday 12 January 2012. Registration and refreshments from 5.30pm. Event starts at 5.50pm and will close at 8pm. Premier House Banqueting, Canning Road, Harrow, HA3 7TS. Places are limited. If you like to attend please contact Harrow LINk at info@harrowlink.org.uk
or call 020 8863 3355.

Monday 7 November 2011

Central Middlesex Overnight A&E Closure Protest

The Accident and Emergency department at Central Middlesex Hospital is due to close at night from next Monday, 14th November.

An emergency protest has been called for outside the hospital at 12.15pm on Tuesday November 8th.
Please come along if you can to show we are opposed to the run down of our NHS facilities.

Monday 5 September 2011

Teather Avoids Accountability on NHS

Sarah Teather MP has refused to answer any questions from her Brent Central constituents on the NHS ahead of the critical vote on the Health and Social Care Bill on 7 September.

Letters to Teather are, according to her office,  'in a four week backlog which is growing daily'. Constituents  asking for a telephone conversation with the MP are told 'Sarah is too busy to speak with constituents on the phone or to meet in person this week'. Asked if there is a statement on the Health  and Social Care Bill by Teather her office advises that no such statement has been issued.

Commenting on this total silence by his MP, Graham Durham from Brent Fightback said:

The Health and Social Care Bill seeks to remove the duty on the government to ensure an NHS is in place and seeks to promote more private profit taking from the NHS. It has caused  huge concern to the BMA and all doctor and health professional organisations are opposed to it. Nowhere in the Coalition agreement or in the Liberal Democrat manifesto was this change suggested.

When she was elected as an MP Sarah Teather promised to be available to listen to constituents but she has now refused to even explain her position on this critical issue. The delay in responding to constituents by
letter is the worst of any MP representing our area in the last 30 years.

It seems the only way constituents can influence Teather before the vote is to attend the lobby of Parliament on  September 7th (meet St Thomas' hospital at 6.30pm) in the hope that Sarah might look out of the window.

Friday 10 June 2011

ACT NOW ON NHS - 38 Degrees

Things are moving fast. The press are reporting that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to finalise changes to their NHS plans - at least two weeks earlier than expected. [1] The next few days are critical - we need to move quickly to influence their decisions.

It looks like Clegg and Cameron may try to push ahead with at least two of the more worrying parts of Andrew Lansley's original plans. They're still toying with imposing more competition from private health companies. And they're still looking to scrap their legal duty to provide the same level of healthcare to everyone wherever they live.

Together, we can persuade them to drop these dangerous bits of the plans. MPs don't get a lot of phone calls from their voters. If thousands of us call them today, it will send shockwaves through parliament as MPs, Clegg and Cameron realise how determined we are to protect our NHS!

Can you phone your MP today? It's quick and easy. Find their name, number, and tips for what to say, here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp

Yesterday, in the 38 Degrees office, team members Johnny and Becky contacted key allies and experts at health organisations, charities and in Parliament to try find out what's going on behind the scenes. [2] It's a bit murky. But reliable sources are saying that, right now, Clegg and Cameron are plotting out which parts of Lansley's plans they need to drop to win public support.

Everyone seems to expect that whatever decision is reached will be a lot better than Lansley's original plans - thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of 38 Degrees members! But they're telling us that we need to pile on more pressure in two key areas:

- Competition in the NHS - an argument is still raging: will the future of the NHS be about health professionals working together to ensure patients get the best possible treatment? Or will Andrew Lansley get his way and shift the NHS towards a US-style system, with a growing role for competition, private companies, and "market forces"? [3]

- The government’s duty to provide a "comprehensive health service" - the government still wants to water down their legal duty to provide a decent health service to everyone, regardless of where they live. This legal duty has been enshrined in law ever since the NHS was created in 1948! Scrapping it would pave the way for a more patchy service, and mean in the future we could all face more problems with "postcode lotteries". [4]

There's still time to push these decisions in the right direction. But we need to move fast. Can you call your MP right now?
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp

Together we can make sure that as senior politicians sit down round the negotiating table, they're hearing reports of record numbers of voters on the phone calling on them to stand up for the NHS. That could just tip key decisions the right way.

The very fact that Clegg and Cameron are having to negotiate which parts of Lansley's plans they have to drop proves that, by working together, we can play a key role in protecting our NHS. [5 ]Sky News reported in April that the government had started backtracking on the NHS as "the result of a lobbying campaign by a pressure group called 38 Degrees". [6] That's us!

Whatever deal is announced next week, it's unlikely to be the end of our campaign. Any changes to the NHS will still need to pass through Parliament to become law, which means we will have fresh chances to improve them. But decisions made in the next few days definitely matter - so let's take our chance to stand up for the NHS.

Please give your MP a ring. Find their name and number, and some tips for what to say to them, here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp

Thursday 12 May 2011

Step out to step up fight to save NHS in Brent tonight

Come to the public meeting in Willesden Green Library tonight at 7.30pm to hear from local GPs, health workers, patients and campaigners.

A word or two from Caroline Lucas to galvanise you into venturing out this lovely sunny Spring evening:
Forcing our GPs to take on the extra burden of commissioning health care as Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities are abolished is a reckless strategy.
The fact is, the coalition government knows perfectly well that GPs will have neither the time, the will nor the necessary skills to commission health care - and this is precisely where private companies come in.
Andrew Lansley's proposals will mean that, for the first time, the NHS is opened up to EU competition law. In reality, this puts services up and down the country at the mercy of price competition between providers - making them dangerously vulnerable to a drop in standards.


The Health Bill has attracted criticism from many organisations, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and UNISON.

When Labour were in power, they welcomed in private healthcare providers and saddled the NHS with huge debts through PFI schemes. Labour started the ball rolling on a transition towards NHS privatisation - now the Tory-led government is taking us ever further down that road..


Tuesday 10 May 2011

Health for People - Not Profit! Come to Thursday's Meeting

COME TO THE PUBLIC MEETING THIS THURSDAY MAY 12th 7.30 pm
DEFEND OUR HEALTH SERVICE
Willesden Green Library Centre
95 High Rd, Willesden NW10 2SF 
 
This meeting has been organised by Brent Trades Council, Brent Fightback and the Campaign to Defend Brent's Health Services. It is also sponsored by NW London Hospitals UNISON and Brent Council UNISON.

Speakers will include: 
Dr Ishani Salpadoulu, Brent GP
Jim Fagan, Keep Our NHS Public
A student nurse
Cllr Navin Shah London Assembly Member for Brent & Harrow
and YOU the workers in and users of our NHS

Saturday 7 May 2011

Brent Battles to Save the NHS

We had a very positive reception from the public at Northwick Park Hospital when leafleting about the public meetings and demonstration in  support of the NHS  (see below). Those most concerned were the elderly, who stopped to talk to us about their concerns that some services would be cut and waiting times  increased, and parents of whose young children needed high quality treatment and continuity of care. The role of private companies, 'they are only in it for the money and not for us' was one comment, was a major focus.

It was significant that the elderly had been around before the birth of the NHS and recognised its achievements. They also acknowledged the gains that had been made in terms of waiting lists and quality of care over the last decade or so and knew what they might lose. When they saw 20-30 year olds refusing the leaflets they remarked that they were a generation that took the NHS for granted and didn't realise what things used to be like and what they stood to lose.

 Click on image to enlarge
Brent Fightback will be leafleting in Central Square, Wembley (next to Wembley Central Station)  this afternoon between 1pm-3pm and will organise further leafleting for the demonstration at the public meeting on May 12th.  Further information from: brentunited@gmail.com or check out Brent Fightback on Facebook.

Monday 25 April 2011

Download the low-down on threat to NHS


Download this very useful broadsheet HERE

Defending the NHS in Brent - May a Month of Action


The 'thinking space' on NHS 'reforms' (privatisation) has provided an opportunity for local campaigning organisations to call a public meeting to enable local people to hear the views of GP, health workers, service users and MPs on the proposals.

Brent Trades Union Council, Brent Fightback and the Campaign to Defend Brent's Health Services have combined to organise 'Defend Our Health Service' to be held on Thursday May 12th at Willesden Green Library, 95 High Road, NW10 2SF.

The following extract from a blog by Russell Razzaque on the Independent website LINK sets out the reality of the reforms:
Working within the NHS today, I have witnessed first hand the sheer confusion and, in some quarters, borderline panic, that has ensued as a result of the governments recent announcements. PCTs were established as the purchasers in the system. These are massive strategic planning decisions that involve many billions of pounds. Overnight, the government plan to remove all of them, and hand the totality of their powers over to GPs. They have not described how GPs – with no training in accounting or management – can take up this role. They have not provided guidance as to how GPs might pool together to achieve this. As the so called “GP consortia” can be as large or as small as anyone chooses, a chaotic bout of “run around” has ensued with GPs trying to partner up with each other across boroughs and local boundaries, unsure which way to go.
The PCTs have already started to dismantle and in London, staff with no future are haemorrhaging in droves, leaving a skeletal operation alone to determine the allocation of billions worth of spending. The Chair of The Royal College of GPs has described the proposed changes as the end of the NHS as we know it. The BMA, the Royal College of Nursing and several of the specialist medical Royal Colleges have spoken out against it. Calls to phase it in and start with a series of gradually building pilots have fallen on deaf ears. No one is sure how it will work or how adversely it will effect patient care. The very people who will be tasked with implementing such rapid change are already utterly perplexed by it. That is because they are supposed to be. It is an engineered shock. All the while, waiting in the wings, with a metaphorical defibrillator, will be the private sector. The large American insurance based corporations are eyeing the soon to explode UK healthcare market with salivating mouths. The vacuum that is being created, is being created for them. They will be hired to do the commissioning by and instead of GPs who are, through no fault of their own, clearly untrained and unable to do it. And it won’t be long thereafter before these same private organisations start hiring themselves as providers instead of NHS Trusts, many of which will ultimately go bust.
The government are, in fact, proposing to rig the market in their favour by requiring every single contract to go for competitive tendering. This means that, even if there is a high performing Trust with which the local population is happy, they will still have to submit themselves for retendering to the commissioners on a regular basis who will then be legally obliged to consider private sector organisations as part of the process. Subjecting hospitals to the instability of a retendering process could be disastrous. I have seen it happen myself. Staff numbers will fluctuate wildly as doctors and nurses, unsure if their organisation will survive, start moving between providers – just as they do in, say, the banking sector. This will potentially destroy continuity of care, as well as in-patient and emergency service provision which relies on regular staff numbers round the clock. A hospital shutting down as a result of losing a bid to a private sector provider, who has undercut their costs as a way of breaking into the UK market – rather than failing to provide an adequate service – could be a potentially dangerous event resulting in the collapse of secondary health care provision for the entire local area. This is why unfettered free markets are a bad idea for health care, and why the US experience has led to a hard fought reversal away from marketization. This is also why, if they were asked to vote for it, the public never would. In fact, in the last election they clearly did not. The Conservative manifesto, with its “no major reorganisations” commitment gave exactly the opposite impression. The only way such drastic privatisation can ever be achieved is through a short sharp shock to the system. Nick Boles, the pro Cameron Conservative MP, laid it out starkly, “’Chaotic’ in our vocabulary is a good thing.” Friedman would be proud. As he himself said, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change”. This is clearly not chaos by incompetence. It is chaos by design.
Brent Fightback will be conducting a public survey about the proposals in Wembley in early May and are organising a contingent to take part in the 'March to Save the NHS' which takes place on Tuesday May 17th (Assemble 4.30pm at University College Hospital, Gower Street, WC1 to march to the Department of Health, Whitehall.

Further information on Keep Our NHS Public