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Brian Hughes, director, Fit for the Future project
3:13pm Thursday 9th October 2008
NHS managers have announced they are suspending the highly controversial Fit for the Future programme after Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust and the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust announced they were considering a merger.
Under Fit for the Future, St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, run by the Royal West Sussex trust, would lose some accident and emergency, maternity and children’s in-patient services.
Here's your chance to quiz Fit for the Future's director on the plans for the hospitals, what happens next, and health in West Sussex.
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Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:35pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Spencer
Hi Spencer,
We need to take time to understand what the merger between St. Richard’s and Worthing hospitals might really mean. They will need three months to get their plans together and in the new year the PCT will ask itself the question should the Fit for the Future plans go ahead as before or is there now material change which we need to take into account. We are going to look at that in public at our meeting on January 29.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:42pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Peter Knight
The NHS has always been a mixture of public and private – after all GP practices are effectively private businesses in contract with the NHS. What matters to most people is that their services are of good quality, available locally and paid for through taxes so the NHS is largely free at the point of delivery.
I can’t answer your specific question about Mercury Health who have been providing a good quality Orthopaedic service in the mid-Sussex area. However, the NHS is required to go through rigorous tendering procedures before any external supplier is allowed to deliver services to NHS patients.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:44pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Skunky
West Sussex spends just over £1billion a year on healthcare for local people and the amount we spend on consulting with the public is quite small. We think it is really important to ask people their views and give them a chance to influence our policies and the shape of their local services.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:50pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Julia Ironside
Hi Julia,
You are right to say that the population of the county is increasing and we need to take that on board. In fact, our plan is to bring a lot more services closer to peoples’ homes. These days a lot more can be done in GP practices, clinics and community hospitals. Only the more specialised services need to be centralised in bigger hospitals. One of the key messages we learnt from the Fit for the Future discussions was how much importance people placed on travel time. We have a strategy called Breath of Fresh Air which describes how over the next two to three years more and more services will be closer to home.
Some services have to be centralised and this is not only an issue for West Sussex. The change is driven by the need to have specialised teams of doctors and nurses who can provide 24/7 expertise and you can’t have that in every town in the county.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:55pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Jemima
Dear Jemima,
We have no plans to turn the PRH into a community hospital. In fact we believe it has a strong and vibrant future as the Local General Hospital serving over 170,000 people in the mid-Sussex area. The Brighton Trust strategy ‘hospital on two sites’ will see changes at PRH over the next few years but these will strengthen local services, rather than reduce them. The only change proposed under Fit for the Future was centralising inpatient consultant-led maternity on the Brighton site and that is on hold for the moment.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:00pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Peter Knight
Peter, I don’t think that private greed is a good thing in any circumstances. But I don’t see any evidence of that nor of excessive profit making in relation to the NHS. If you’ve got any specific evidence or facts you want me to consider, I’d be happy to do so.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:03pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Colbert
The Fit for the Future plans haven’t been ‘dropped’, they’ve simply been put on hold. What that means is we’re having a pause in our process while St Richard’s and Worthing hospitals focus on their plans to merge. If they do go ahead this will be a significant change in the shape of health services on the coast of West Sussex and we need to be sure we’ve thought through the implications with the new merged trust.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:09pm Fri 10 Oct 08
I'm confused by the whole thing to be honest mate. I live in Littlehampton, which is roughly half way between Chichester and Worthing. If Fit for the Future is scrapped and the two hospitals effectively merge - which would one would I go to. The missus is up the duff at the moment too. Which one would she go?
Larry Mazeltoff
Hi Larry,
I am delighted to hear of your wife’s current condition. I wish her well for a happy and successful pregnancy.
Merger is not about getting rid of a hospital but about linking them together so that they can improve their services to patients and reduce costs. People in Littlehampton will still be able to access either St Richard’s or Worthing hospitals for most services. Under the Fit for the Future plans only emergency surgery, maternity and inpatient children’s services would be centralised at Worthing over the next two to three years.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:14pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Andrew Friend
Andrew, that’s a really good question. The PCT and its partners had put a lot of work into developing the early proposals but we’d always recognised that some issues needed more discussion. During the public consultation period we continued to work with our doctors and nurses to see if there was a better way forward. Earlier in the year they recommended a revised model of service which the PCT agreed in May of this year. We have learnt a lot from the consultation about the importance of access to services and also about the difficulties faced by people in rural parts of West Sussex. The PCT gave clear commitment at its July meeting to work with local authority and NHS partners on these issues.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:21pm Fri 10 Oct 08
cheggers
Hi cheggers,
Not everyone seriously thinks you can have an A&E and a maternity ward in every town. In developing our plans for services in the county we worked with the doctors and nurses, and it was their advice that the way to get the best outcomes for mothers and babies was to centralise maternity services. I accept that some changes in the past have been done for financial reasons but Fit for the Future was genuinely not about saving money but about strengthening healthcare. We describe this as ‘clinical sustainability’ that is making sure that the care is safe and of good quality not just for today but for the next five to ten years.
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:24pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Peter Knight
Okay you’ve give me some facts, I need time to check this out. I have your email address and I promise to get back to you in the next week.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:30pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Peter Knight
When planning health services there is often a tension between safety and quality of care and ease of access. In West Sussex on the advice of our clinicians we put safety and quality at the top. The decision in East Sussex by the Independent Review Panel seems to have given ease of access greater priority. Our colleagues in East Sussex are now reviewing how they should respond to this decision.
BH
Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
1:32pm Fri 10 Oct 08
I do understand why people worry about the future of their local hospital but the NHS has never stood still. There are always changes in technology, drugs and treatments and this has benefitted us hugely. Fit for the Future is about centralising a small number of services to make them secure for the longer term but it’s just as much about bringing a wider range of care closer to your home.
BH
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Brian Hughes
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Friday Inquisition, Brighton says...
12:34pm Fri 10 Oct 08
Please can you rate that spending on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a total utter incompetent and scandalous waste of taxpayers money and 10 being tip top value, great job, money well spent?
Simon Buss
Hi Simon,
PCT has spent about £1.4 million. The exact details of this have been on the PCT website since the end of August (http://www.westsuss
expct.nhs.uk/about-u
s/fit-for-the-future
). This year’s budget is just over £300,000 but some of the cost will depend on whether we have legal costs if judicial review goes forward.
I think we would score 8 out of 10 because we went out and spoke to thousands of people and handled almost a third of a million responses, and the team did this well. But of course, we can always learn lessons and do it better next time.
BH