Fear of hospital madness

Publsihed: 4 February 2010

• HAS the Royal Free Hospital gone mad!
First we have the greedy bankers and now the £70,000 laminated desks, and they are not even made of gold (January 28).
Clearly the Royal Free Charity Trust are living in a dream world, with a land of plenty and milk and honey.
To utilise £70,000 is scandalous and immoral as I understand there are a large number of redundancies announced shortly. Those who ordered the desks should be the first to receive their P45s.
It is strange that we have not heard from the chief executive.
I was appointed to the Friends of the Royal Free Hospital Trust in July 2009 and I have seen the hard work by its members raising funds for medical equipment. To see the charity decision in providing desks leaves me with no option but to resign.
Ralph Eschwege
Abbots Gardens, N2

No closure

• IN the debate on the future of the Whittington Hospital it is crucial that it is understood the problems it would create for the Royal Free if the plans to merge the A&E went ahead.
Pond Street, South End Green and Hampstead generally is not famed for the free flow of traffic and doubling the A&E pressure on this point of London is pretty daft.
It’s one of the more realistic and compelling reasons for saying NO to the plans for closing the Whittington A&E.
Good luck and all support to the campaigners (Emergency meeting to save hospital’s A&E, January 28).
Ed Fordham
Hampstead and Kilburn Parliamentary campaigner for the Liberal Democrats

Profiteering

• NOW we have it. NHS Camden (the primary care trust) are stating that their aim is to “open up the market” for the provision of primary health care services in Camden.
A comprehensive, integrated NHS is being dismantled and the service is being thrown to the unpredictable winds of a profiteering private health care market. We Camden residents must call a halt to this damaging policy which pervades all our public services these days.
Robert MacGibbon FRCGP
Leighton Grove, NW5

How to keep tabs on news about our primary care trust

• ONLY one thing in this world is certain and that is that we are all going to need medical help, sooner or later.
So thanks to the Hampstead Group Practice in Fleet Road for hosting the recent meeting (January 27) at which a lucky few locals grabbed the long-overdue opportunity to ask Camden primary care trust bosses first hand about issues such as failure to consult patients on the stealth privatisation of local surgeries, and the muddled future of the new stroke unit and physiotherapy department at the Royal Free.
The answers we got direct from the mouths of John Carrier (PCT chair), vice-chair Dani Jayes and PCT accountant Liz Wise were a well-rehearsed oil and water mix of “we know best” and “we want to be transparent, open-eared and communicate better than before”.
The suggestion that most of the news we have so far got on the PCT’s plans has had to be dug out by local newspapers did not go down well.
The PCT’s rebuttal, that all this information is easily available from NHS websites, is laughably naïve. Not everyone has access to the web or time to dig for frankness among the muddled mess of self-serving committee-speak.
Tell us how we can do it better, challenged Dani Jayes.
So I made a constructive suggestion which it might be good to have on wider record for future reference.
If the PCT really, really wants to be transparent it could offer local newspapers a regular (weekly or monthly) column containing clear plain English news to update readers on real world issues like fresh consultations, open meetings, decisions taken, progress made and mistakes admitted.
If offered, surely no newspaper would say no to at least giving this it a try. So will the PCT now offer it? Do please keep us posted.
Barry Fox,
NW3