NORTH Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood, who 11 years ago established ‘CHANT Cymru’ (Community Hospitals Acting Nationally Together), fighting for local beds at local community hospitals, has today slammed the Welsh Government for closing community hospital across Wales and called for those in power to start “listening, designing and delivering local services with clinicians and local communities”.
Speaking in an Assembly Debate on Health and Social Care this afternoon, Mr Isherwood criticised Labour Welsh Government for forging ahead with community hospital closures, despite campaigns from the public to keep them open.
CHANT Cymru successfully campaigned for suspension of Labour’s plans to close community hospitals in 2006/7, however, when Labour returned to single party power in Cardiff in 2011, they again pushed ahead with their community hospital closure programme.
Speaking in the Assembly Chamber, Mr Isherwood said:
“North Wales Community Health Council wrote to the then Health Minister expressing concerns about the robustness of the information provided by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which they used to inform their close decisions to close community hospitals at Flint, Llangollen, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Prestatyn. Dozens of Community beds were lost, despite bed occupancy levels of 95% and above.
“The GP who set up the North Wales pilot Enhanced Care at Home scheme with the Health Board, stated that: “This will bring a service that is currently frequently gridlocked, further to its knees” and that “a central part of the proposed shake-up of health services – providing more care in people’s homes – won’t fill the gap left by shutting community hospitals”.
“This Welsh Labour Government ignored the Flint Referendum in which 99.3% voted in favour of returning in-patient beds to Flint – and then ignored the Blaenau Ffestiniog referendum where an overwhelming majority voted in favour of returning beds there.
“When I visited Holywell Hospital, staff told me “extra investment in our local community hospitals, such as Holywell, and NHS community beds in Flint, would take pressure off our general hospitals, help tackle the A&E crisis and enable the health board to use its resources more efficiently”.
“As the head of the NHS in England said: Smaller community hospitals should play a bigger role, particularly in the care of older patients’.
“At last June’s Royal College of GP’s Wales Assembly event, ‘Strengthening General Practice to Support the NHS’, we heard that: “General Practice in Wales provides 90% of NHS consultations for only 7.8% of the budget. Prolonged underinvestment means that funding for General Practice has been decreasing compared to the overall Welsh NHS”.
“Yet we face the significant challenges of an ageing and growing population. Consultations are becoming longer and more complicated as we deal with an increasing number of patients with multiple chronic conditions”.
We also heard from them that NHS Community Beds add to the breadth of things GPs can do, including respite and step down care, assisting both primary and secondary sectors.
“If it really means what it says about co-production in Health and Social care, this Welsh Government must start listening, designing and delivering local services with clinicians and local communities, ensuring transition and replacement beds.”