The campaign to save Torbay Hospital from a feared downgrading
Save Torbay Hospital is in the process of instructing solicitors to take the NHS to the High Court.
Lead campaigner Susie Colley told the Pulse that a company is being formed to take the fight forward. She will be one of the directors of Save Torbay Hospital Ltd, which will take over the pressure group she began to save cardiac services.
So far £13,000 has been raised to fund legal action which was at first aimed at stopping the feared move of emergency cardiac care from Torbay Hospital to Exeter. (see Pulse articles here)
Now, however, the battle lines are widening.
Torbay Hospital serves all of us in South Devon, from East Prawle to Bovey Tracey, Dartmoor to Dawlish. But Susie and her team are frustrated that their urgent message seems not to be getting through to the public who use the hospital. She’s looking for local ambassadors in Totnes to help boost the campaign.
The Trust which runs Torbay hospital has repeatedly said there are no concrete proposals for changes which would threaten its future as the area’s acute and emergency care centre. Susie points to evidence she says is contrary – the recent call for voluntary redundancies being one.
Another is the ongoing move to centralise pathology (blood and biopsy tests, for example) in Gadeon House in Exeter. The official NHS website states that this is “to create a sustainable model of pathology across the south-west peninsula that helps patient pathways to be as effective and efficient as possible”
Why is this important?
One example is sepsis. Patients suspected of having a serious reaction to infection need blood test results in minutes. No path lab – or a reduced service – will, Susie says, lead to delays in delivering the right antibiotics. Patients on respirators also need blood gases measured frequently.
“I don’t understand why nobody seems to understand the urgency of this,” she said.
Torbay Hospital has said that earlier plans to replace the outdated pathology lab (housed in an old portable cabin) fell through when the New Hospitals Programme, initiated by the last Government, did not progress. It has been “working to find a safe, modern and sustainable solution.”
This is the new service in Gadeon House, a building owned by Torbay Council as part of its investment portfolio.
Eyebrows were raised by some when the council decided to lend the Exeter health trust £7.5 million towards the work. Torbay says it’s not a loan, and will get the money back with interest.
Earlier this month Joe Teape, the Chief Executive Officer of the Trust, told Susie in an email : “The programme is not about choosing between investment in Exeter and investment in Torbay Hospital, nor is it about moving patient care away from Torbay. It is a specific programme relating to cellular pathology (histopathology) accommodation and has been developed in response to significant estates and infrastructure challenges associated with the current laboratory facilities.
“We also recognise the importance of cellular pathology in supporting acute, cancer, surgical and emergency care. For that reason, a key requirement of the work now underway is to ensure that urgent and time-critical pathology support for services provided at Torbay Hospital continues through safe and clinically agreed arrangements.”
Susie asked the question that if the current facilities aren’t considered fit for purpose, how can urgent pathology investigations continue during the transition period. She has also chided the local press for what she feels is a lack of interest in the campaign. In a Facebook post, she said: “I completely understand your position that you would like to see the NHS Devon Integrated Care Board set out its plans in writing before publicly supporting the concerns being raised about Torbay Hospital. [Note – the ICB commissions services across Devon] However, I would respectfully suggest that this presents a fundamental problem.”
“If the ICB only ever confirms decisions once they have effectively been implemented, how can the public ever debate proposals before they become reversible? Isn’t that precisely when local journalism should be asking difficult questions rather than waiting for a final announcement? Over recent years we have seen individual services reviewed, relocated or proposed for relocation, with each change presented as a separate decision. Many members of our campaign are concerned that these individual changes may form part of a much wider reconfiguration of healthcare across Devon.”
With Torbay being accused of being a pawn in the complicated chess game of moving services to where the ICB thinks best, Susie is at least taking heart from the success of a similar campaign in Huddersfield. There, locals banded together to fight the move of A and E services to Halifax and the closure of the Royal Infirmary. It took five years – and a High Court case – but they won.
Halifax is less that eight miles from Huddersfield, with a car journey taking around 20 minutes. Torbay is 27 miles from the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital, and can take 30 to minutes, longer in summer traffic.
The latest NHS rejig brought in by the current Government states At its core, the Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle that care should happen: as locally as it can.”
The irony is not lost on Susie. “You can’t tell me that moving acute services to Exeter is improving services to local people here!”
Will the campaign cross the desk of Prime Minister in waiting Andy Burnham?
“He gets all my emails,” Susie said. “Whether he reads them or not I don’t know.” Numerous Freedom of Information requests have been made to the Trust asking what business cases have been made for the changes in services. They are all on the Heart Campaign’s website.