Community Group For Mid Ulster Hospital
Ward 3 Padlocked
Ward 3 at the Mid Ulster Hospital closed early, The Northern Health & Social Care Trust have padlocked the doors into Ward 3. The ward is still full of beds while patients are laying in trolleys in Antrim waiting to be admitted to the hospital due to shortage of beds.
It is almost a year since the A&E was removed from the Mid Ulster Hospital, a hospital that we were told then would still serve as a local hospital, with the current plans put in place for Mid Ulster Hospital it will be left as nothing more than an empty building.
On short notice a phone call came from Trust Head Quarters to nursing staff at the Mid Ulster Hospital informing staff to immediately remove up to 10 patients from Ward 3 to Ward 2 at the Mid Ulster Hospital.
Staff who thought that they had up to three weeks left before being redeployed elsewhere are now left in limbo or distress as they now have to make arrangements for short term childcare, families of patients were not informed.
What did the Trust have to hide when they went in by stealth to remove the ward as quickly as possible without public knowledge, do these people forget that it is we as Potential Patients & Tax payers who pay their ridiculous wages.
Why has the Assembly stood back and allowed this to happen when everyone knows the problem’s that have occurred since Mid Ulster Hospital has been maliciously run down. Had the previous Assembly done nothing we would still have a hospital located in Mid Ulster, instead the Assembly done worse than nothing they worked against residents in Mid Ulster and removed it.
As per the Hayes Reports / Developing Better Services, as brought forward by former health minister Barbie De Bruin, as to which any equality impact assessment on health services will be based upon, the Mid Ulster hospital was to serve as a local hospital. A Local Hospital was defined by Hayes as having among others;
Inpatient beds, including;
- · Acute Medical beds for patients not requiring 24 hour consultant oversight
- · Step-down and convalescence beds for those patients requiring post-operative care following discharge from a larger acute facility
- · Respite care beds for carers requiring respite for a number of weeks per year
- · Palliative care beds for patients requiring this support
- · Rehabilitation beds including those for patients requiring rehabilitation following a stroke, accident or fracture, or who are suffering from the debilitation of old age and chronic rheumatoid conditions.
Now is not the time for the blame game, now is the time for action.
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/hospital_statistics_inpatient_activty_2009-10.pdf
Between 2005/2010, there has been a decline in the number of inpatient beds available in hospitals across Northern Ireland. The reduction of 962 beds in the five year period will be further impacted upon by the removal of beds at Mid Ulster, Braid & Whiteabbey hospitals.
Declining beds in Northern Ireland with an extra approx. 43 to be removed from Mid Ulster Hospital by the 5th June 2011, a move that runs contrary to Developing Better services as published from the consultation document known as the Hayes report. The loss of these beds will see an overall reduction of 27,305 bed days per year within the Northern Health & Social Care Trust, and a move that can only be seen as incompetence by Board members given the current capacity issues in the remaining Acute Hospitals.
Key Statistics;
In 2009/10 the Mid Ulster hospital had the equivalent of 94.7 beds that were occupied 88.4% throughout the year, The second highest of all occupancy rates.
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/hospstats_01_sect1.pdf shows that Mid Ulster had 189 beds, of which all were acute medical beds, according to Hayes the only hospital in Northern Ireland that had a complete quota of medical inpatient beds.
ENDS _______________-------------------------______________________
Hugh Mc Cloy
Chiar - Save The Mid
Tel: 07871503189
Web http://savethemid.weebly.com/index.html