A community hospital in St Ives is set to close for good
NHS Kernow has approved a recommendation that the Edward Hain Hospital should not reopen
Last updated 1st Dec 2020
The permanent closure of Edward Hain Hospital in St Ives has been approved by health bosses but a new campaign has been launched to build a new hospital.
Inpatient beds at the St Ives community hospital were closed temporarily in 2016 due to concerns about fire safety but have never reopened.
While outpatient clinics have continued at the hospital today NHS Kernow approved a recommendation that the hospital should no longer be used for health or care services.
However the NHS Kernow governing body heard at its meeting this morning that an extra 28 care home reablement beds were set to be made available at a new care home in Penzance which will serve the Penwith area.
The announcement was made after Cornwall Council’s health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee last week decided that while Edward Hain should close the lost beds should be provided elsewhere.
Details about the new beds were only made public at the NHS Kernow meeting and had not been mentioned to the scrutiny committee last week.
The governing body heard that the new beds are set to provide specialist dementia care in the long-term but will be used as reablement beds to help with people needing care in the Penwith area.
Helen Charlesworth-May, joint accountable officer for public health and care at NHS Kernow and Cornwall Council, said there had been no attempt to mislead councillors.
She said: “I am really sorry if people feel they were misled in any shape or form. It was a genuine and honest reflection from what we heard from members of the public and members of the scrutiny committee about how they thought we should take the development forward.
“These were long time in the planning and will ultimately be commissioned to meet requirements for dementia care once our surge period is over.”
The governing body heard that in the four years since the beds at Edward Hain closed there had been major changes to how care is delivered.
Dr Neil Walden, the clinical lead on the work done on the future of the hospital, said that this had seen care being delivered at home.
He said that 177 more people had been seen for rehabilitation services in Penwith at their homes in that time and there had been 515 more reablement appoints a month in the area.
Dr Walden said that there had also been more facilities available to use at West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance.
And he said that while the average stay for patients in Edward Hain had been 15.6 days in West Cornwall Hospital that had dropped to just 5.2 days.
Dr Walden said: “The landscape has changed dramatically. It is much better for you to be in your own home.
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for reablement beds but we need to promote care at home or as close to home as possible.”
However while NHS Kernow approved the permanent closure of Edward Hain a new campaign was launched to build a new one.
Led by former St Ives MP Andrew George and Cornwall Council cabinet member Andrew Mitchell, who represents St Ives, it is calling for a new hospital to be built in the town.
The campaign is calling for at least 20 inpatient beds at the new Edward Hain along with a nurse-led workforce.
It also wants a full range of diagnostic services commensurate with a community hospital; reablement services including physio and OT services; and 24-hour medical doctor cover.
In a statement the campaign said: “The Government may have succeeded in its plan to close Edward Hain Hospital (EHH). But we are determined to ensure it is replaced with a new, bigger and even better purpose-built community hospital and that it shall be named The Edward Hain Memorial Hospital – to reflect and respect the important generous legacy and sacrifice on which it is founded and to acknowledge the strong link with the town and people of St Ives.
“We note the view of health managers that the old building is not best suited for inpatient beds and the range of diagnostic and reablement services necessary for it to function effectively. But we dispute the implied conclusion that intermediate inpatient NHS beds and facilities are not needed in this district of west Cornwall. We believe the area needs and deserves a community hospital which is well integrated with the acute and primary care sectors of the NHS.”
They added: “Not to do this will leave our communities with significant and unacceptable uncertainty and a gulf in services between the acute hospitals (RCHT) and isolated patients struggling in an out-of-sight out-of-mind patchwork of services at home and which are too often insufficient, understaffed and overstretched.”
The campaign said that the Government should provide funding for the new hospital and called on them “to allocate a portion of the funds it promised Cornwall in the lead-up to last year’s General Election for the building of new hospital services in Cornwall”.