What do we think?

With this in mind, the Trust have asked the following questions (in red italics).  Our comments and proposed position on these questions is given below each question.

 

Q1  Do you agree with our aim to provide as much care as possible from our existing hospital sites at St Helier and Epsom and do this by working more closely with the other local health and care providers?

 

Our Response:  Yes.  This is much more preferable than closing either of the existing hospitals which had been proposed previously.

 

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Q2  Do you think we have made the case that we will improve patient care by bringing together our services for our sickest or most at-risk patients on a new specialist acute facility on one site?

 

Our Response:  In an ideal world both hospitals would be enhanced to have their own Acute Care Unit.  However, we appreciate that funds are unlikely to be available to provide two Acute Care Units in our area.  We have waited many years for a “state of the art” hospital in our area and demanding two at this time would probably result in us getting none.  Also the Trust is already having difficulty recruiting sufficient qualified staff to run the units that it does have.  Concentrating their staff in one unit would mean it would be able to offer experienced staff for longer hours of cover and reduce the agency staff bill by over £1m per month.

 

At our meeting on the 28th September, Dr James Marsh, the Trust’s Joint Medical Director, told us that he had personally polled many senior clinical staff and they were all of the view that a better patient service could be provided from one centre rather than from two.

 

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Q3  We have set out several scenarios on how we can do this.  In all scenarios 85% of patients will continue to be treated at Epsom or St Helier as now.  Do you think we should consider any other scenarios?

 

Our Response:  In none of our meetings was an alternative suggested other than the option mentioned above of enhancing both hospitals.  So “No”.

 

It is therefore our proposal to support the Trust in their proposal to press ahead with their business case for a single Acute Care Unit.  There have been so many attempts for over 25 years to make a step function improvement in our health care facilities.  It is vital that this initiative succeeds and we have confidence in the Trust’s current management team that they can make this happen.  We would welcome your feedback.

 

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This, of course, leads to the difficult question which will arrive next as to where the ACU should be located.  All of the politicians want the facility on their own patch.  Chris Grayling thinks the Trust should be split up and Epsom Hospital expanded in its own right.  Tom Brake supports the ACU at St Helier while local MP Paul Scully is supportive of retaining services at St Helier with the possibility of the ACU at Belmont.

 

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What if the Acute Care Unit is located at Belmont?

For the future, our position is that it would be good for our area to have a local state of the art hospital.  Being an Acute Care facility, patient arrivals and departures will be much lower volumes than a unit specialising in, say, outpatient care.  However, that doesn’t reduce the concerns about the impact of the unit on the surrounding neighbourhood.

 

We are assured by the Trust management that 10% of the capital funding they hope to obtain would be expected to be spent on infrastructure improvements.  

 

IF the Acute Care Unit is to go to the Sutton Hospital site in Belmont, then improvements we must ensure are provided as a minimum must include:

• Provision of sufficient and affordable parking onsite

• A plan put in place to ensure that on-street parking in the surrounding roads is not seen as an attractive alternative

• The road network around the site must be enhanced both at a macro and a micro level to ensure that emergency services can reach the site and to ensure that there is no detrimental effect for local residents.

• Public transport improvements will be needed to ease travel throughout the hospital’s catchment area and in particular between Belmont and Epsom and Belmont and St Helier.

 

We must demand that all such improvements are in place before the facility is opened. 

 

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Is there room on the Sutton Hospital site?

The diagram below shows how the old Sutton Hospital site has been split into different land parcels.  The new secondary school will occupy just the small northern section of the site (1.6 hectares) basically what was the ornamental lawns and the front of the old hospital building plus the visitors car park.  The temporary school that will be used while the main school is being built will be located in Cumbrian House, an existing building behind the Malvern Centre.

 

All of the land shown green has already been purchased by the London Borough of Sutton and it is planned that they will purchase all of the remaining land parcels with the possible exception of the land shown yellow.  This is roughly where the Acute Care Unit could be located.  Although only a relatively small area, the building could be 3 storeys high rising to 7 storeys high at the east of the site.  This is broadly in line with the design guidelines for the London Cancer Hub which suggests a “pyramid” style of development  i.e. low round the edges but higher in the centre.