Lots needs to be done to secure the future of NHS care in Lancashire
The healthcare boss leading the push to build new hospitals in both Preston and Lancaster says it is entirely reasonable for the NHS in Lancashire to ask the government to stump up for two totally new facilities.
Lancashire and South Cumbria is in a cohort within the national new hospitals programme which is centred around a timetable for building beginning – in whatever form might ultimately be approved – by 2025, with a view to any new facilities being open by 2030. To that end, Mr. Hawker is hopeful that the region will shortly hear one way or the other whether its bid has been successful.
“I think it’s really important that people do come out and look – you can’t write down the reality of what the hospitals are like and what it’s like to walk round them if you’re a patient or carer or a member of staff. We can still make a big step forward with [the alternative proposal of] partial rebuilds, it just wouldn’t be anywhere near the same. If you look at the Royal Preston, the big difference is…a partial rebuild won’t replace the big tower block [ward] building.
“So we’ve got to find the right balance [and] it’s important that people realise you can’t just build a hospital anywhere.” Emergency medicine consultant Michael Stewart told the LDRS that it can be “depressing to think about the gap between what we’ve got and where we want to be”. Stressing that he and his colleagues “make it work” within the confines of the Sharoe Green Lane site, the leading doctor says that a newly-built hospital would nevertheless transform the experience of patients being treated there and the staff looking after them.
“So it’s hard work for the staff, but if you’re unwell, then [being moved] is a big risk factor for delirium and becoming very confused – it’s not great for [a person’s] recovery. Every time you move someone, especially if they’re a bit confused to start with, it just makes it that little bit worse. Demand is now exceeding capacity across all clinical areas, causing “congestion and overcrowding”, the document states – with the facility also experiencing “serious dilapidation”. If he were given a blank sheet of paper on which to design a new hospital, Dr. Stewart – who is also the divisional director of medicine at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals , the trust that runs the Royal Preston – says he would want to ensure not just sufficient space, but a more practical layout.
The hospital’s neurology ward is in an area that is not physically connected to the main site – resulting in the extraordinary situation where patients need an ambulance to transfer them within the hospital grounds if they have to move from that ward to the main hospital building. Even under the partial rebuild option, many acute services would be located in closer proximity to each other in what would become a new “urgent and emergency care village”.
He is also in no doubt about how the Royal Preston manages to function in the way that it does – in spite of being built in an age when there were fewer patients and fewer treatments to help them. Cherish, an emergency department nurse, has a natural affection for the corridors that her late grandma once walked – but even that familial connection does not blind her to the fact that the hospital in its current form is “no longer fit for purpose”.“It sometimes means having to book ambulances to move patients from one part of the hospital to another.
The age of the Royal Lancaster is a double-edged sword for the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust which operates it. Not only has the site amassed an £88m maintenance backlog, but its running costs are also double those of a new-build. Half of the estate has been assessed as requiring demolition, while the majority of the remainder will need refurbishment if it remains in use.
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