Kingston Hospital Roadshow comes to the Hook Centre
Back in September I complained to Kingston Hospital that they had ignored this end of the Borough when arranging their consultation roadshows. And to their credit the Chief Executive responded by announcing an extra roadshow - it will be this Wednesday, 5th December, at 7pm at the Hook Centre.
Sadly there seems to have been minimal publicity about this event, so I'm doing my best to encourage people to go along.
The purpose of the meeting is to hear about the Hospital's proposals for Foundation status, and also to discuss their plans for working with the private sector ... not sure what that is about. It will also be a good chance to raise other issues with senior staff.
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Derrick Chester
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03 December 2007
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01:25
The bit about working with the private sector is about a proposal to engage a private company to carry out all elective surgery (NHS and private), as well as seeking to attract more private patients to the Hospital. The private company will have its own operating theatre (s) as well as its own ward (s). It is argued that Kingston is not getting enough private work. The two consultants who wrote to the Board recommending this project stated 'there is a large untapped private healthcare market and a properly run private unit would inevitably generate significantly more income'. However the current private ward at the Hospital is not a success and it is believed to have to be subsidised by the rest of the Hospital. One of the arguments in favour which they put forward is that currently elective work can get cancelled due to the pressures on beds caused by emergency admissions. They say that under these new arrangements that could never happen. However my question is that if that flexlibility is lost what happens in times of peak demand for emergecny admissions, especially if there is local disaster, where are people going to go if those beds cannot be used? Also at present theatre staff work across both elective and emergency lists and that would have to stop under these new arrangements with seperate staff for each. Again what are the implications for flexibility in times of acute need? Also it is predicted by the Board that just the legal costs alone in drawing up the contract between the private provider and the Hospital will amount to £750,000. What precisely do private healthcare companies contribute to the most important thing that you need to deliver a healthcare system i.e training. As far as I know nothing. I also have a concern that the Board seems to pre-empting an NHS London decision not yet taken that Kingston will not have an out of hours emergency surgery facility presumably meaning that people will have to be transferred to St Georges. There might be some arguments for this but we have to be careful that it is not the first step towards losing an A and E altogether.
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