Campaigners say patients should be spoken to before £31m plans get underway.
Campaigners say they have serious concerns about a £31 million NHS plan to move intensive care beds off the Leicester General Hospital site.
The Evington site currently has 12 level three intensive care unit (ICU) beds, but health bosses want them transferred to Glenfield Hospital and Leicester Royal Infirmary, where two ‘super adult critical care hubs’ would be created.
However, the people in charge of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), which runs Leicester’s hospitals, have been accused of pressing ahead with a major change to how and where patients are treated without any proper public consultation.
In response to the criticism, the trust says it has been “totally clear” about the plans, an aim of which is to end the “costly triplication of services”.
On Thursday night, 50 campaigners gathered outside City Hall in Leicester chanting ‘Tories Out’ and ‘Save our NHS’ before the city’s health and wellbeing scrutiny committee discussed a report compiled by De Montfort University’s health policy research unit.
What the report states
The report criticises UHL for its lack of consultation on a project that was first mooted in 2015, and was deemed urgent so was allowed to be approved without consultation.
The DMU report says despite it being deemed urgent no changes have been made in the subsequent three years so now a consultation should be carried out.
Former renal nurse Janet Underwood is one of the report’s authors.
She said: “This is part of UHL’s plan to move from three acute hospital sites to two.
“It is a major proposal but they have not consulted patients and they have not released key technical information.
“There is a concern that services will be split between sites and that is not in the best interest of the patients.”
It is feared renal, hepato-pancreato-biliary and urology services particularly will be disrupted by the move.
Mrs Underwood said: “There are that many issues of concern there needs to be a full public consultation for them to be explored.”
UHL says the General site will still provide a range of services including imaging and renal treatment, as well as having a diabetes centre of excellence and community beds.
Where the ICU beds are now
Currently there are 27 intensive care beds at Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI), 22 at Glenfield Hospital and 12 at the General – a total of 61 beds.
The changes would see 27 beds remaining at LRI, Glenfield would become home to 33 intensive care beds and the General would be left with five beds, only one of which would be level three. In total, there would be 64 intensive care beds across the three sites.
Steve Score, of the Leicester Socialists, said: “There has been no public consultation on this. Despite that, they are planning to move ITU [intensive care] out of the General, which will make it very difficult to keep other services there.”
He said he believed the NHS was trying to implement the plan through stealth.
Chairman of the health and wellbeing commission councillor Ellly Cutkelvin said it was “quite understandable” that people had interpreted the hospital as trying to get the move through by stealth.
She said there had not been enough information released by the hospitals on such a significant change.
Commission member Councillor Lucy Chaplin suggested the scrutiny commissions involved in the plan might have been misled – perhaps unintentionally in 2015 – when they agreed consultation was not needed, and that the urgency of the situation had been overstated.
UHL has said the plans have been in the public domain since 2015, and that there was nothing secret or stealth like about them.
What the trust says
Trust medical director Andrew Furlong said the situation at Leicester General’s ICU reached “tipping point” because of operational difficulties when it was struggling to recruit staff, in part because it had lost its status as a training facility.
He said it was frustrating that it had taken three years to secure the £30.8 million capital funding needed for the project.
Mr Furlong said: “We have been totally clear that it is our stated aim to consolidate services on two sites to end the clinically unsustainable and financially costly triplication of services.
“Foremost of those services is ITU.”
He said the plan to have intensive care on two rather than three sites would reduce disruption and unnecessary expenditure. He also pointed out, in response to concerns that services would be split over two sites, that they are currently split over three.
Mr Furlong added: “To be honest, if money were no object we’d love to get service on to just one site. That would give us the perfect configuration, but that would be prohibitively expensive.”
UHL intends to start the project in October and hopes to have it complete by 2020.
Mr Furlong said the trust was awaiting news from the Government on its bid for £367 million to carry major improvements across its sites.
He said: “Once we have the nod on that we will consult on for example the future of the General, a new women’s hospital, new children’s hospital and new day case hospital.”
The ICU plan will be discussed again at another scrutiny meeting on Tuesday, September 4.
The trust says the plan is not about making cuts but improving care and investing its estates.
Article originally appeared on LeicestershireLive
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