Council "Lays Down Gauntlet" over Hospital Plans

Campaigner are urging local residents to attend the public meeting, being held at the Oak Suite, W12 Conference Centre, Hammersmith Hospital in Du Cane Road on July 30 from 10am till 12.30pm.

Save Our Hospitals are asking people to join them at the entrance to the hospital at 9.30am.

They say it is the public's last chance to exert any influence on the board before they make their final decision.

Among the newly published proposals included in the "Shaping a Healthier Future" programme are:

Demolition of the current hospital at Charing Cross, with 55% of the site sold off to developers, replaced by a £150 million development on the remainder.

Inpatient beds at Charing Cross reduced from 360 to just 24.

A&E and acute surgery moved to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington with the new building at Charing Cross providing ‘an emergency service appropriate for a local hospital’.

Meanwhile St Mary's itself, while retaining its A&E department will also be reduced in size, with 45% of its site to be sold, and the Western Eye Hospital in Marylebone Road will also be put up for sale with a proposed price tag of £270 million.

The closure of A&E departments at Hammersmith Hospital In Shepherd's Bush and Central Middlesex Hospital A&E in Park Royal are also going ahead on September 10, with Imperial hiring top advertising agency M&C Saatchi to inform the public of what it calls a "change" to services, for a reported free of £55,000.

The new Labour administration at Hammersmith and Fulham Council has already met with health chiefs to demand that they halt plans to demolish Charing Cross Hospital and replace local A&Es.

Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter has joined them, calling the plans "devastating news" and saying: "Now we have the final proposals and they are worse than we were recently led to believe."

You can read his full response here.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust's chief executive Dr Tracey Batten has fired back at the MP's comments, saying:
" A draft strategy setting out how we want to develop our services to meet changing health needs will be presented to the Trust board on 30 July. The draft clinical strategy was posted on the Trust website on Thursday along with other board papers.

" A foreword to the draft clinical strategy, signed by myself and the Trust’s most senior medical and nursing leads, makes clear that the status quo is not an option if the trust is to respond to changing health needs and continue to provide high quality care."

You can read this signed foreword here.

July 29, 2014