Independent panel blocks Oxford hospital cuts - hope for the DGH?

9.26.03am GMT Fri 28th Mar 2008

Last week The Independent Reconfiguration Panel - set up by the government to take responsibility for unpopular decisions away from ministers - said access would be "seriously compromised" if Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust went ahead with plans to centralise its paediatric, gynaecology and obstetric departments. This comes in the same week that the HOSC (Health Overview Scrutiny Committee) in East Sussex has referred the PCT's decision to the Reconfiguration Panel to move consultant-led maternity at the DGH to the Conquest Hospital in Hastings.

Stephen Lloyd said: "Bearing in mind all the safety and transport issues that have been so well aired by the cross party Save the DGH campaign in the Herald over the last 18 months, I am hopeful that we will get the same result from the Reconfiguration Panel when they examine our case, as have those campaigners at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospital. The government must recognise that big is not always better."

Cllr Carolyn Heaps added: "As a Practice Nurse and someone who has worked in the NHS for years, I see expectant mums all the time. The concern that many have expressed to me of the proposed down-grading of maternity services at DGH is considerable. The decision by the Reconfiguration panel in Oxford shows that common sense can still prevail for us even at this late stage. Like many Eastbourne residents I had my children at our local hospital and it would fill me with horror if I knew that I'd have to be transferred to Hastings. I work in Bexhill and know exactly how busy the main road from Eastbourne to Hastings often is. Can you imagine a mothers anxiety if she were to go into labour at rush hour? The managers at the PCT who have made this dreadful decision may not be aware that babies tend to come when they're ready, not when it suits the powers that be."