Minutes show Pennine Acute deny A&E closure plans

Reporter: Laura Wild
Date online: 28 July 2010

The minutes from meetings held by the Pennine Acute Trust, one just two weeks before the decision to close A&E was made, show the Trust deny any such plans.

It was announced earlier this month (July 2010) that the Pennine Acute Trust had made the decision to close Rochdale Infirmary A&E to ambulances between 6pm and 8am.

The proposed closure will begin next Monday (2 August 2010).

This decision was made despite it being described as “unfounded” and former Rochdale MP Paul Rowen being accused of “scaremongering” when he brought the closure to the publics attentions prior to the general election in May.

Councillor Jean Ashworth, Chairwoman of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee was appalled when the news of the closure broke.

Since the announcement she has provided Rochdale Online News with the minutes of two meetings in which she asked a question regarding the closure.

In a meeting held in March, Councillor Ashworth asked if the rumours about the closure of A&E were true.

The response, which can be seen in the minutes from the meeting, was: “The Chief Executive of Pennine Acute NHS Trust told members that the rumours were unfounded and there were no plans to close Rochdale A&E at night.”

Councillor Ashworth asked this question again in June, just two weeks before the closure announcement was made.

This time the response, stated in the minutes from the meeting, said: “Tom Wilders informed the Committee that no formal consideration had been given to close the Accident and Emergency Unit at Rochdale Infirmary in the evenings and that if any proposals were to come forward these would be brought to the committee for consideration.”

Councillor Ashworth said: “I want the Trust to be open and honest. Two and a half weeks after I asked that question it was all over the media that the question I asked was true, it wasn’t rumours, it wasn’t scaremongering, it was true.”

Councillor Ashworth described the time of the ambulance divert as “the worst possible time.”

She said: “I knew it was true at the time. They tried to hide it under the carpet but then it reared its ugly head again.”

“I will find out the truth about this decision, I just want a fair deal for the people of Rochdale.”

A spokesman for the Pennine Acute Trust explained that there were no plans in the pipeline when the questions were asked.

The spokesperson said: "The Trust's reluctant, but necessary, decision to suspend Ambulance admissions to the Rochdale Infirmary between 6pm and 8am from early August for an initial period of up to 3 months has been taken because there will be too many gaps in the middle grade medical staff rosters in both A&E and Acute Medicine to run services with absolute guarantees of patient safety and continuity of service.

"We have been unable to fill a number of medical staff posts despite many efforts to do so, including overseas recruitment initiatives. The strong and clear clinical medical advice is that we should not take ambulance admissions during these hours until the staffing situation improves markedly.

"We will still continue to explore all ways of recruiting to these posts on a permanent basis and if we are able to resume the service earlier we will of course do that. This is not a decision the Trust has taken lightly but one that has been taken out of patient safety considerations."

Dr Anton Sinniah, A&E consultant and clinical director for Rochdale Infirmary said: "The Trust's top priority is patient safety. Current planned losses of staff will unfortunately result in the inability of the Trust and staff to sustain 24 hour cover safely for our patients from August.

"All options have been considered and actions taken as a response to the severity and imminence of the risk, however all have been without success."