Backing for RCHT

Responding to reports in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust had the second highest increase in deaths (+25%) at weekends, West Cornwall MP – and member of the Commons Health Select Committee – Andrew George said:

“RCHT assure me that good progress has been made since these figures were collected over a year ago. This is part of a national trend which Health Ministers must take action to avert.

“In any case this is hardly surprising.  RCHT is given the lowest funding of any hospital trust in the country.  In fact Ministers make sure that key District General Hospitals like Royal Cornwall are not undermined by their obsession to marketise everything they do.  Our key hospitals need support to provide a fully integrated service with a critical mass of clinicians on site.

“So long as private companies can undermine the viability of hospitals like Treliske by creaming off the more profitable and easier to perform work then this will risk undermining the ability of those hospitals to perform the kind of 24/7 service we all want and need.”

 

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