Bedford Hospital Paediatrics - Update Following Emergency meeting

Yesterday saw the urgent meeting of the Bedford Borough Health and Wellbeing Board on the appalling loss of vital children's services at Bedford Hospital. the meeting shed a little more light on this awful situation, and also revealed two particular major issues of concern in addition to the shocking loss of services.

Before going into those, I want to highlight that the frankly devastating loss of services begins as soon as soon as Monday 21st July, when ambulances will no longer be taking children to Bedford Hospital A&E. The plan yesterday was also that there was to be no A&E for walk-in patients under 19 years old from August 1st, but the hospital has since said it will see and treat children with minor injuries such as stitching a wound or taking an x-ray. Overnight care and the Children's assessment unit will stop from 1st August. For the very latest from the hospital about what the changes mean in practice, visit http://www.bedfordhospital.nhs.uk/latest-update or, for further advice and information, ring 01234 730500.

Having these crucial services ripped out of our community is deeply shocking. The situation is compounded by two major points of concern which emerged at the Board meeting, as follows:

1. There has been a desperate lack of communication to residents about the changes that are about to hit our community in a matter of days. Most shockingly, we learnt that all families with children with high needs and who require new care packages 'will be contacted' to discuss the implications for them. The hospital knows who these 290 families are, and the fact that they have not yet been contacted is utterly appalling. The anxiety and strain that this issue must be causing to these families is unimaginable. We are weeks on from when the hospital knew it was losing the junior doctors, and this really is unacceptable.

I insisted today that this process must be a priority now for the hospital, alongside a mass public information campaign. It really was dreadful that even on Thursday morning there was no sign of this major loss of services on the front page of the Hosptial's website, for example. Following the meeting, this was fixed, and you now literally cannot miss it. It is awful, though, that the hospital had to effectively be publicly shamed into doing this sort of thing, just a few days before these major changes are imposed on local families.

2. I called yesterday's meeting hoping to hear a united voice from the NHS that bringing services back to Bedford as soon as possible is a shared priority. We did not hear this. The hospital stated that it wants to bring the full range of services back to Bedford, but explained that this decision is in the hands of the healthcare commissioners. I asked the Clinical Commissiong Group if they are committed to bringing them back to Bedford. Instead of the 'yes' we all wanted to hear along with an explanation of how they will we working to achieve this, the NHS Commissioners said that they will launch a consultation on reconfiguring paediatric services permanently.

This is nothing other than an attempt to exploit this deeply distressing crisis for local families to force through plans to cut acute services in smaller hospitals. Never mind that the services provided in Bedford achieve good outcomes for patients and that families hold them in high regard. There is an agenda which states that services must be on fewer, larger sites, with hospitals like Bedford suffering major cuts, and the current situation is being exploited to try to impose this 'vision' on our community.

This is absolutely unacceptable, and I will fight alongside everyone who cares about restoring these crucial children's services to Bedford to make sure it doesn't happen. There is a particular problem around supervision of junior doctors that has caused the current closure. All local NHS efforts should be on remedying that problem and ensuring vital children's services are restored as soon as possible. Nothing else will be acceptable to local families, who will be appalled that NHS decision makers' response to this appalling loss of service is to try to impose permanent cuts.

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