Redbridge Council Health Meeting

Alwen Williams, the Chief Executive of the local NHS came to Redbridge Town Hall recently to take questions from the Redbridge Health Committee.

Alwen reports that planned C sections should be coming back to BHRUT this April, although an exact date was not given. Perhaps one of the most interesting points of the night came from Neil Zammett , he argued that the current crisis in our A&E is caused by under capacity. BHRUT estimates around 60,000 people a year will be non-elective admissions (this means staying a night or more at hospital after coming to A&E) at Queens and KGH A&E, but the real figure is around 75,000. If Neil is correct, it would be dangerous to close KGH A&E. This begs the question of why NHS bosses are still set on the closure next year. Heather Mullin, a senior NHS manager has promised a capacity review shortly which will hopefully address Neil’s concerns.

Joyce Ryan, the Chairman of the committee, spoke for everyone on the committee when she made it clear that progress towards a better NHS for Redbridge residents was not going at the speed expected and that the constant stream of bad publicity was unfortunate. There was a a unanimous view that more information about A&E performance, particularly regarding black breaches and temporary closures of A&E to ambulances should be put up on the BHRUT site on a monthly basis .

BHRUT did respond to this point on 4th April stating A&E information was disclosed at http://www.bhrhospitals.nhs.uk/aboutus/plans.php However, I cannot find weekly black breach figures here or the how often how our A&E are closed on a temporary basis to ambulances and I will continue to push for this information to be published on the BHRUT site.