A health boss has said GPs don’t understand a major plan proposing changes to health services, let alone the public.
Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), published in December, suggests cutting more than 160 hospital beds across the county and increasing and improving services delivered in the community.
At a meeting last Tuesday Stafford Borough Council’s health scrutiny committee said more must be done to explain the STP to the public and asked why, for example, an informative video couldn’t be shown on TV screens at GP surgeries.
Chairing the meeting, Councillor Ann Edgeller said: “I’ve been to some doctors’ surgeries over the past few weeks and there is nothing about the STP. These are the people we are trying to tap into.”
Andrew Donald, the accountable officer of Stafford and Surrounds Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “The reason there’s nothing in GP surgeries is because the average GP wouldn’t understand what the STP is. “We haven’t got any depth to the STP at the moment. It’s at a strategic level. You need to get into it with practitioners, staff, the public. We haven’t done that.”
The plan aims to avoid a funding gap of £542m and suggests moving from three to two A&E sites and one urgent care centre.
Councillor Stewart Learoyd said: “My concern is that a document that says we will have two A&Es and an urgent care centre from three hospitals almost sets us against each other.”
He said: “Why is the plan not just saying ‘this is the plan’?”
Mr Donald said: “Because we haven’t done the work. Part of the consultation is to develop a model for urgent and emergency care across the patch, then consult on the model.
“We want to provide urgent and emergency care 24/7 that might be provided through general practice, services at the hospital, out of hours etc. We wouldn’t be having a debate as to whether it’s called an A&E or not.
“If I said there will be an urgent and emergency care service 24/7 on the hospital site, run by primary care, GPs, with access to diagnostic tests and stabilisation, nobody would say I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He added: “It would treat the same patients that are presently going through the A&E door. What you wouldn’t have access to immediately are consultant services. At the moment they are there for the small number of medical patients. Most of them can be dealt with through an urgent care service. They need stabilisation and support, not a hospital bed.”
Mr Donald said he has put together a “plain English” presentation about what the STP is trying to do and what things will look like when it’s finished. There is no release date for that document as yet.
A spokesperson for the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent STP said: “We have published a summary of our proposals on the Together We’re Better website.
“As we move forward with the STP we will be holding a number of events where members of the public will be encouraged to ask questions.
Article originally published by Staffordshire Newsletter
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