Two sets of speakers attended the February meeting of IKONP to tell us about two important issues: the consultancy on maternity care and the proposed resale of a number of GP surgeries. We recorded the meeting and you can find it in the link below.
Chloe Moralesoyarce, head of communications for StartWell and Anna Stewart, programme director, came from North Central London ICB.
We accepted their offer to speak at our meeting to inform our response to the consultation on either changing or closing maternity services at the Whittington. They explained that they have been looking at how to improve maternity, neonatal and children’s services across North London and last year published a case for change in which they proposed to cut the number of hospitals delivering these services from 5 to 4. They have presented two options:
A Improve the unit at the Whittington and close the maternity unit at the Royal Free
B Close the unit at the Whittington and improve the unit at the Royal Free
Hear what they had to say: February IKONP meeting
They are asking everyone to send in their opinions on the proposed changes. You can do this and find out more at the Start Well website. You can also fill in a consultation response on the website. Or, we have put together a suggested response in the form of a letter which you might like to tailor and then email to: StartWellConsultation@ors.org.uk, or post to: Opinion Research Services, FREEPOST SS1018, PO Box 530, Swansea, SA1 1ZL. You can also phone: 0800 324 7005. Here is a suggested letter. Feel free to make it your own.
Your name and address
Date
North Central London Integrated Care Board, Public Consultation on the reconfiguration of maternity, neonatal and child surgical services in NCL
Dear NHS planners
I am replying to your request for views on the proposed changes in North Central London to maternity, neonatal and children’s surgical services. Before responding to the specific proposals could I say that the material produced significantly underplays the way in which the NHS has been damaged over the last decade or so by the absence of a staffing strategy, the decision to pay valuable specialist staff pay rises which covered no more than inflation, and the robbing of the capital budget to pay for service delivery, leaving the NHS estate in a very poor condition. The results of this for maternity services are seen in the Care Quality Commission’s judgement that around 70% of the nation’s maternity services are below an acceptable standard.
It is clear that you are making the best of a bad job by proposing to make this change. Your assumption is that a capital spend of about £40m across the four sites and redeployment of specialist staff, particularly midwives, will contribute to solving the problem. We believe that unless the strategic issues which are causing large numbers of midwives to leave the service are solved, it is unlikely that you will be able to solve the staffing problems by redeployment. Much more will be needed to encourage midwives to feel valued and to continue working in NCL.
As a secondary point, we are also not sure that your projections of the likely birthrate are the best they could be. The current low level, while common around Europe, is also occurring at the same time as a major cost of living crisis, during which people either reduce their family size or defer decisions to have a family. As NCL is in one of the more buoyant parts of our economic geography it seems likely that its number of births will rebound more quickly than elsewhere and we might find ourselves with too few maternity beds in the medium term.
It is with a heavy heart that I respond to your actual questions by favouring the options that keep the Whittington maternity service open. I believe this is the option that has the least bad impact on health inequality, with the Royal Free cut offering slightly less bad health equality outcomes.
In any case, more could be done to mitigate the impact of this cut by ensuring that care closer to home is available in local ante-natal care which works in partnership with the main obstetric-led services. I was encouraged to hear in a recent presentation by one of the planning staff that much work is under way, in addition to the planned service reconfiguration, to improve the way that service teams work together. I look forward to seeing this work pay off in better services.
GP Surgeries
Brenda Allan came to talk about the experience of fighting the takeover of GP surgeries by Virgin and HCRG.
She told us that 60 practices, including St Anne’s in Haringey and Hanley Road and Mitchison Surgery in Islington are on the market because, having been sold by Operose and Centene, they couldn’t make enough profit to make them attractive.
Diane Paice told us about the experience from St Anne’s surgery in Haringey. Find out more in this article.
We are aiming to work together on this.
Hear what they had to say: February IKONP meeting
You can also register to attend a webinar about the sales on 27 February at 18:00. You can learn more at this website and register for the webinar by clicking here.
islingtonkeepournhspublic.org 