31.07.13
Mid Staffordshire NHS FT to be dissolved
Trust Special Administrators (TSAs) have recommended that Mid Staffordshire NHS FT loses most of its critical services, with patients transferred to neighbouring hospitals.
The trust was no longer viable, the TSAs found, with shortages of staff leading to failures of care.
Mid Staffordshire was the first foundation trust to be put into special administration in April earlier this year following the Francis report and the years of “appalling” care that could have led to hundreds of patient deaths.
Stafford Hospital will keep its current A&E service but overnight care will not be resumed. Most emergency surgery and trauma care will end, and maternity and paediatric services moved to the University Hospital of north Staffordhshire and Cannock Chase Hospital's services taken over by Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust. The plans will be put out to consultation until October 1 and, if approved, will be implemented by 2018.
The reconfiguration has also been supported by Monitor’s Contingency Planning Team (CPT).
Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, one of the Joint Trust Administrators said “Our guiding principles were to propose draft recommendations for safe services that are provided as near to patients’ homes as possible and within the available budget.
“For example, under our recommendations the vast majority of present patient visits to Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals will be in the same place with nine out of ten of such visits unaffected. In some instances patients will have better services, for example, access to certain specialists locally for the first time. We believe safety and quality may be enhanced.”
And Alan Bloom, Joint TSA, said: “The draft recommendations represent the most effective way of bringing the Trust’s financial problems under control with the real prospect of reducing the overspend to zero in the future. However there is significant additional work required on the financial position during the consultation period.”
Local campaigners are still calling for services to be retained at the local hospitals. Maurice Blisson, from the Support Stafford Hospital group, said before the release of the report: “We hope that the hospital will be saved and that nothing will be changed.
“But we have got to be pragmatic and realise that there is money involved and therefore it is quite likely that they will come up with a compromise that might lose us some facilities, which would be upsetting.
“In particular we want to save the A&E unit – which has already been reduced to day time opening hours – and we want to preserve the maternity and paediatric services.”
On July 25, two Stafford Hospital nurses were suspended from the nursing register. Tracey-Ann White and Sharon Turner had brought their profession into serious disrepute, the Nursing and Midwifery Council panel found.
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