Hospitals hypocrisy

Published: 16 December, 2010

• PENNY Abraham’s letter about the future of St Luke’s Hospital (December 9) shows that we don’t always lose a community champion when someone retires from politics.

The tragedy of St Luke’s being allowed to deteriorate and then that deterioration being used as a reason why the site cannot be redeveloped is an example of the current hypocrisy being practised by the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust which owns it.  

The trust wants to close more than 100 of its in-patient beds in an effort to save money. It has already decided that the Grove Unit at The Royal Free Hospital, which has been open for less than 10 years, will close in spring 2011.  

It is consulting on proposals to make the unkindest cut of all and close Queen Mary House in Hampstead, which currently houses many elderly patients with dementia.  

Everyone knows that moving people of this age and with this condition often leads to premature death. The trust seems to have no humanitarian concerns about this.

Your correspondents have often laid the blame for the cuts at the door of the chair of the foundation trust. However the proposals are actually being put forward as safe by clinicians, led by the trust’s medical director.  How are these proposed cuts to be squared with the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath?

JOHNNIE RAY
Mill Lane, NW2