Southport Hospital in line for major shake-up ?

Southport Hospital in line for major shake-up ?

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust is meeting this morning (Wednesday) to consider long terms plan that could well involve radical changes at both Southport & Formby and Ormskirk hospitals.

And, according to Southport’s former Lib Dem MP and now Dukes Ward councillor, John Pugh, this is bound to end the divided pattern of services that has prevailed for the last 20 years.

The Hospital Trust Board is to consider a report of top doctors from across the region (the so-called North of England Clinical Senate) which proposes an end to the previous political carve up of services between the two sites in Southport and Ormskirk, in favour of a “Hot/Cold” model with most emergency services being on one site.

According to Cllr John Pugh this represents a massive rejection of the previous Shields Report. This was implemented by the last Labour government in the teeth of huge local opposition in Southport.

In a section headed “Long Term Sustainability” the report to today’s Hospital Board meeting says: “Under a networked model, the most sustainable model for the Southport and Ormskirk Trust could be to have A&E,Urgent Care, Frail Elderly Care, Short Stay Paediatric Assessment and Mental Health Crisis service on the Southport site with in patient acute, medical and acute surgical care also there.”

(See section 6 of Item 186 at http://www.southportandormskirk.nhs.uk/downloads/Trust%20Board/Agendas/2018/H%20-%20July%202018.pdf )

Cllr John Pugh comments: “This almost certainly implies the uniting of both Adult and Childrens’s A&E services on the Southport site and would certainly be most welcome. However it’s not the only option on the table and although positive noises are coming out of the hospital under its new Chief Executive nothing has been finalised and much will require intensive consultation.”

“We certainly shouldn’t count our chickens in Southport so far as the NHS is concerned and not every change will be to our liking. However we should recognise that centralising services on the Southport site has a lot of practical sense to it and we should push for that.”