A&E department at Chorley Hospital to remain open after consultation scrapped
The decision was made by the Health Secretary.
Chorley and South Ribble Hospital’s accident and emergency department is set to remain open for the foreseeable future, after the health secretary ordered that a planned public consultation solely recommending its closure be scrapped.
We understand that Matt Hancock made the eleventh-hour intervention not long after local NHS bosses had been told that they could finally set a date to formally ask residents for their views on the future of the facility.
That would have been the culmination of a tortuous process which goes back almost five years to when the A&E at the Euxton Lane site was shut down for nine months because of a shortage of medics.
As it was revealed just over a year ago, the two main options likely to be put to the public involved the closure of the now part-time department and its replacement with one of two versions of a round-the-clock urgent care centre. Several groups of clinicians drafted in to assess the situation had concluded that the facility was not “clinically viable”.
The option of sticking with the status quo was still set to make it to the shortlist, but only to provide a benchmark position against which the proposed alternatives could be judged.
However, it can now be revealed that, just over a fortnight ago, the head of NHS England in the North West wrote to local health leaders to tell them that Mr. Hancock had issued “an instruction…to develop an option that provides safe, high-quality care and continues to include Chorley ED emergency department”.
Central Lancashire’s two clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have confirmed that they will now be abandoning altogether a consultation that was the pivotal plank of the Our Health Our Care (OHOC) programme, which was set up in 2016 to reconfigure health and social care services in the region.
The long-term future of Chorley A&E will now be explored as part of work to assess the development either of two new hospitals to replace the Royal Preston and Royal Lancaster Infirmary, or a so-called “super hospital” to serve the whole of Central and North Lancashire.
Those options were unveiled by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) late last year when funding was announced for a series of new hospital builds across the country. However, it could be anything between seven and 10 years before any new such facilities are built.
The area’s three MPs stepped up their collective lobbying of the health secretary over the future of Chorley A&E when it was once again shut completely for eight months last year as part of plans to increase intensive care capacity to deal with the pandemic.
Last spring, Matt Hancock made a number of asides on the subject in Parliament when addressing Chorley MP and Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle – on one occasion, telling him that he was a “huge enthusiast” for the department.
Responding to Mr. Hancock’s blocking of the consultation in its proposed form, Sir Lindsay welcomed the abandonment of what he described as a process “skewed towards justifying the closure of our A&E on a permanent basis”.
“Chorley has an expanding population and needs a fully-staffed, fully-functioning A&E department at our local hospital.
“I and many residents have campaigned for our A&E to remain open on a number of occasions when the trust has decided to close its doors. Thankfully, we received a return to 12-hour provision, although I want to see this extended and will continue to lobby for 24-hour opening,” Sir Lindsay said.
South Ribble MP Katherine Fletcher said that the issue is one of the most common raised with her when she speaks to people in her constituency.
She added: “The three MPs have worked hard to ensure the health secretary really understands the detail and I am pleased that he has not only listened, but personally involved himself at a time when his diary isn’t exactly quiet.”
Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans hailed a “very sensible decision” which would give the people served by Chorley A&E – including those in parts of his own constituency – “the service they deserve”.
The letter to local NHS bosses, which outlined Mr. Hancock’s instruction to halt the consultation as it stood, was sent by NHS England North West (NHSE NW) regional director Bill McCarthy.
In it, he stated that the move had come about because of “deep concern at the way the process has been managed so far, as public confidence in the process is not where it needs to be”.
He added that the work done to date had “focused on the closure or downgrading of the ED at Chorley” and there was a lack of confidence “that sufficient consideration has been given to how a safe, high-quality service could be offered to local people while retaining the department”.
However, it's understood that what is known as the “assurance process” NHSE NW had undertaken, assessing the work to develop options, had given the consultation a provisional green light just last month.
A source has told us that having initially offered “partial assurance” in early January, NHSE NW then gave “full assurance” a month later after its initial minor concerns received a response. It would then have been considered at a national NHS level.
The decision to reopen the facility back in November – just as the second wave of coronavirus began to hit the region – sparked anger from emergency department consultants at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals (LTH) , which also runs the Royal Preston. Seventeen of them wrote a letter describing the reopening as “misguided and dangerous”.
Since that date, the unit has been open between 8am and 5pm, seven days a week – although the latest developments will see bosses consider how they can restore the 12-hour service that was in operation from January 2017 until last March.
The OHOC work has been carried out by existing CCG and LTH staff as part of their normal duties – although the partnership does have a dedicated programme director.
It is understood that this work will now be used to form the basis of the business case being developed as part of the new hospitals programme.