Dear Councillors
Consult on the new plan to close King George A&E & so overload Queens
Some senior politicians are doubting the existence of a new plan to close King George A&E and so overload Queens. I provide a time frame and documents to establish beyond doubt that there is a new plan to close King George A&E.
Chronology
29th March 2019: Cllr Athwal issues a press release to say there is no plan to close King George A&E along with other Council Leaders and local NHS managers:
3rd April 2019 The Inner North East London Joint Overview Scrutiny meets at Old Stratford Town Hall. Within the agenda is a paper from the East London Health & Care partnership (ELHCP) the key slides include the below making it clear that while the £49M bid to reconfigure King George & Queens failed along with other bids, the ELHCP is keen to progress with alternative funding.
Another slide makes it clear that PFI is a possible means for funding the £49M plan to "reconfigure" King George & Queens below:
A Facebook recording of the meeting is at
https://www.facebook.com/andywalker19/videos/10219009231809508/
with the Estates Strategy discussed at the end.
11th April 2019 - Sees the partial publication of the 2018 £49M bid to reconfigure King George A&E and Queens. The full document is at £49M bid to reconfigure King George & Queens
Key pages are
The fifth bullet point in the bottom half states: "Repurpose King George A&E as an Ortho-Geriatric Receiving Unit"
A key point made in the final paragraph is that following the repurposing of King George A&E that all current BHRUT activity will stay within BHRUT. The 2011 King George A&E closure plan saw patients going to Whipps & Newham.
Page 11 below describes the plan as a "radically different model of care" at point 1.
However page 10 below says in paragraph 4 that the "project would not warrant further public consultation" as there "been ongoing engagement with stakeholders on their development". This claim seems odd as the plan was published yesterday and is still missing key parts!
Current performance at BHRUT
The following are January & February 2019 type 1 A&E performance figures obtained from FoI requests
However it must be said that Queens is coping well with those requiring urgent care per the extract from a report sent to me recently:
Please find below an update on ‘streaming process and waiting times at Queen’s hospital and actions required to address any identified issues’ – as per an outstanding action from the last Joint PEF.
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BHR CCGs have contracted directly with PELC to provide the Queen’s Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) service since 5 July 2018. Since then the service has been managing a steady increase in the type and number of patients being treated in the UTC, rather than emergency dept (ED). This allows ED to focus on the patients that require a higher acuity of investigations and treatment.
Urgent and emergency demand over winter is always high, with the Queen’s site particularly experiencing ‘surges’ in demand. During very busy periods there can be over 30 people walking in each hour, sometimes for a few of hours. Queues are carefully managed so the sickest people are seen first, and the occasional person that walks in acutely unwell is rapidly handed over to ED by an urgent care centre (UCC) clinician. The service has operational monitoring and escalations plans in place to manage queues, so when a queue exceeds agreed levels staff are moved within the department to manage this.
Key measures for success of this service are the number of patients treated within 4 hours and the percentage of patients they see. The Queen’s UTC consistently sees over 99.96% of their patients within 4 hours, well over the 95% target.
The percentage of people who are seen in the UTC has increased significantly since PELC has been in place. Of all the people who walk in 52% were managed in the UTC in August, in February 2019 this increased to 70%. When we add the high number of ambulances that go to the Queen’s site, which is how this is measured nationally, the percentage seen in the UTC at Queen’s was 48.37% in February.
The debate so far
Senior politicians in Redbridge claim there is no plan to close King George A&E and overload Queens. Rather than engage with the issues and evidence I have been called obsessive by Mike Gapes MP and implied to be a "crackpot" by Cllr Rai on twitter. I have suggested to them and Cllr Santos and Wes Streeting that they need to calm down and read the documents above. Abuse will not further an understanding of what is being planned for our hospitals.
What the Save King George Campaign A&E Team recommend
Bob Archer, Pete Mason, RoseMary Warrington and I met earlier today. We are seeking your support for the new plan to close King George A&E be consulted upon. With the performance figures so bad at both hospitals per the photos above it must be right that NHS managers submit their plans to detailed scrutiny via a consultation process.
We go to 10 Downing Street on 3rd May to seek the PM's intervention to intervene and order BHRUT to consult with the public on their plans.
On the face of it the new closure plans are very broad brush when compared to the 2011 closure plan and need to be either strengthened; or as I would prefer the £49M plan abandoned and a new plan with greater funding to expand acute provision at King George to cope with the growing NE London population.
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