The Princess Royal Hospital in Telford has been threatened with cuts to its A&E service as the NHS trust in Shropshire tries to cut its £31m debts. The A&E service has supposedly been saved but at the expense of the consultant-led paediatrics unit meaning that any children taken seriously ill at night will have to be taken about 15 miles to the Royal shrewsbury Hospital instead.
Earlier this year the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust was forced to hand over a chunk of this years budget to a regional NHS bank set up by the Department of Health. They then had to borrow back that money – and more – in the form of a loan from that bank. Shortly afterwards a West Midlands regional health authority was created and the NHS Trust subsumed into it. The NHS Trust had no say in any of this and there was no public consultation.
The regional health authority put a stop to the plans that Shrewsbury & Telford had drawn up to deal with their debts on the basis that someone in Birmingham who has nothing to do with the hospitals is better placed to make a decision about those hospitals and it is the reigonal health authority who have made the decision to cut the level of care at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital.
The regionalisation of England continues unchecked, in secret and unopposed. The Tories are opposed to it but where are they when services are regionalised and cut back? Where is Telford’s Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, when these decisions are taken?
