Why are the PCT determined to ruin the Royal Surrey?

I have attended recent board meetings at the Royal Surrey County Hospital and was shocked at the misrepresentations the PCT seems to be adopting in its attempt to bully the Royal Surrey into closing its Accident and Emergency facility.

The Department of Health has recently published a handful of documents that inform the process and that need responses:

1. Consultation called "Commissioning framework for health and well-being"

This is a document that has the hallmark of management consultants. They seem to have arrived at a utopian state where all treatment is available to the patient in the community 'at the point of need' - quite how all of this will be managed is difficult to envision but one particularly fatuous remark is:

"Local Authorities, by virtue of their elected leadership, tend to have strong links to local people and community needs." - what planet are they on; the strength of local authority delivery is in the competences of the officers and not the political motivations of the councillors!

We do not have the networks established and it is hopelessly and completely wrong - if not negligent - to be discussing closing parts or all of the hospitals on the presumption that this community-led strategy will catch everyone. The A and E departments are the safety net of last resort when this community plan goes horribly wrong. No A and E department should close.

2. Matrix clinical options workshop (March 2007) "West Surrey Community: Squaring the Triangle"

The 'Emerging Principles' include various that were NOT agreed by the RSCH clinicians - such as:

"a full A&E department in the future would need to be supported by a catchment population of between 450,000 and 500,000 people."

This takes no account of transient populations such as those travelling through the area on trains, buses, in cars or even passing through Heathrow and Gatwick!

The overriding assumption arising from the seminar was that the clinicians agreed there should be two rather than the current three A and E departments. They did not.

What seems to have happened is that partial answers to carefully couched questions provided an inaccurate overall impression of the advice from the clinicians.

IT IS ESSENTIAL EVERYONE GETS THEIR WEIGHT BEHIND THE RSCH AND THE ROYAL SURREY ACTION GROUP - see the weblink on this page.