With the coming battle between Ormskirk and Southport as to which town will have the last hospital standing, Labour has chimed in with a plan to make Southport and Formby residents travel even further to get to hospital A&E.
Senior Labour Councillor John Fillis is proposing scrapping both Southport and Ormskirk hospitals and making local patients go to a new ‘Super Hospital’ to be built in Skelmersdale instead.
Councillor Fillis has attacked the original decision to put adult A&E in Southport. Herightly points out that although the Labour health ministers who took children and maternity services away from Southport 15 years ago “promised improvement in public transport and highways. . . the facts is that thing have got worse.”
A big battle looms soon in the NHS as to where to put the one main hospital which they think is all that is sustainable locally – with the balance at the moment only just in favour of Southport Hospital becoming the new acute services ‘hot site’ with closure of maternity and paediatric services at Ormskirk.
Says Councillor Fillis:
“What we need is a new ‘Super Hospital’ built in Skelmersdale, which already has excellent highway links to Ormskirk and Southport via the new A5758. The M58 motorway link would also enable fast links to regional services in Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Lancashire.”
Under this plan, Southport residents needing Accident and Emergency Services would make the 23 mile trip first down the Formby bypass through Crosby and then via Switch Island before speeding up to the new hospital at Skem on the M58.
The Labour councillor’s plan is for the present Southport Hospital to “become a rehabilitation and hospital for the elderly.”