12 HOUR VIGIL on 20th September 2008. Over 400 signatures collected.

12 HOUR VIGIL on 20th September 2008. Over 400 signatures collected.
photo copyright News Shopper.

Sunday 6 April 2008

Urgent Care Centres...look and smell...

Letter to Bromley / Bexley Extra, published 4th April.If Ms Liz Butler, chair of Bromley PCT, believes (report 28th March) that urgent care centres, as is proposed for Queen Mary's Hospital, "look and smell" like A&E departments then she is living in cloud cuckoo land. Let me help her out. Around 1/3rd of existing A&E patients - i.e. the ones requiring the most urgent care - would NOT be catered for by an urgent care centre. They would have to travel further for their A&E care with all the inherent risks that that poses. A&E departments are staffed by senior clinicians with intensive care back-up. Urgent care centres on the other hand would be nothing more than glorified GPs, staffed by family doctors, with outpatients and diagnostic facilities but with no emergency back-up.

The picture is beginning to not look very healthy at all.

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