Comment – Our NHS cannot carry on like this
Commenting on news that RCHT has, again, declared a “major incident” and discouraged people to go to the emergency department at Treliske, local MP and Health Select Committee member, Andrew George said:
“We cannot carry on like this. The further West you go the more precarious the situation. There is no other A&E service that those in the far West can go to. When emergency services like this are closed, blue light ambulances cannot take patients to the North, West or South, there is only a very long and potentially life threatening journey to the East if the front doors at Treliske are shut.
“Years of cutting hospital beds, the revolving door of perpetually changing executive chiefs of the Trust and the burden of the massive legacy debt caused by underfunding have left our only acute Trust in this position.
Last night (on BBC Newsnight) a highly respected brain surgeon Henry Marsh said that “the whole system is extremely inflexible” – because there is no spare capacity, it’s always on the edge of chaos!
“With too few hospital beds and not enough nurses on the wards, what we see happening today will happen again and again unless someone gets a grip.”
Mr George will address these issues at his public meeting on the NHS on Friday 20th February, 7pm, at Penwith College, Penzance, when RCN leader Dr Peter Carter and Cornwall’s health chief, Dr Colin Philip will join him on the panel.