A group of doctors and other senior health professionals have launched a campaign to secure more community hospital beds in town, claiming the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital is reaching crisis point.
The Community Beds Campaign Group has claimed around 98 per cent of beds at the RSH are permanently occupied, when the recommended maximum figure is 85 per cent. They insist more community beds are needed to meet the needs of the town’s large elderly population, and have written to Shropshire County Primary Care Trust calling for action.
A public meeting will be held this Saturday at The Lantern in Sundorne to discuss the situation and potential ways forward, with all interested parties urged to attend. Dr Charles West, chairman of the campaign group, said the ideal situation would be to reinstate a community hospital in Shrewsbury but said it would be at least 15 years before such a facility could be opened.
Among those to put their names to the letter include Liz Holdsworth, consultant solicitor at Wace Morgan Solicitors and regional co-ordinator of Shropshire Solicitors for the Elderly, former vice-chairman of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Rose Manger, resident Margaret Hamer and Hannah Thompson, chairman and CEO of Community Involvement in Care and Health.
A host of GPs have also signed up to the campaign, including Dr Mary McCarthy who is chairman of Shropshire Local Medical Committee, Dr Jacques Maurice and retired consultant physician Dr Terence West.
Dr Charles West said: “It’s widely regarded that hospitals should run at 85 per cent bed occupancy, but the RSH is running at 98 per cent which is astonishing and scary. This bed crisis is now probably the biggest single thing affecting the quality of care given to patients in Shrewsbury.
“In an ideal world we would have a community hospital in Shrewsbury and it would have been built on the former Copthorne South site which has since been sold for housing. But there are other sites, options and possibilities and it’s important the PCT considers these.”
The letter states: “We believe that the current shortage of beds and the ways of working that this necessitates puts undue pressure on medical services, on management and patients, their families and visitors. We believe that the provision of community hospital beds in Shrewsbury would address many of these issues, and we ask Shropshire County PCT to seek funding to make this possible.”
Julie Thornby, director of public affairs and governance for Shropshire County PCT, said the trust had invested significantly in extra community-based health services in the Shrewsbury area.
She said: “The PCT has not received the letter from the group as yet, but we will be happy to respond to it directly when we do. We also regularly attend weekend and evening meetings in order to answer questions and to provide information, on this occasion we were invited to the meeting at short notice and are unfortunately not unable to attend.”
The meeting on Saturday starts at 3.30pm.
By Peter Kitchen