VIGIL - 20th September 2008

Vigil for Queen Mary's Hospital raises awareness of plans to close vital services
The 12-hour Vigil for the future of Queen Mary's Hospital organised by Independents to save Queen Mary's Hospital held on Saturday 20th September collected 400 signatures on a petition objecting to the flawed process which led to the closure decision being taken (if it hadn't already been decided pre-consultation).

With placards showing the distances to the nearest hospitals, travelling times and bed-occupancy rates it was no surprise that over 1,000 motorists passing the Vigil energetically responded to the "Give a hoot for your hospital" notice.

Campaign leader John Hemming-Clark commented: "It was a very noisy day, but it went to show the strength of feeling that this decision to close vital services has aroused. All is not lost, by any means. With an independent review and judicial review application being prepared the decision to close is now out of the hands of the bureaucrats and into the hands of the Secretary of State and the High Court. Let's hope the Secretary of State is listening, not only to the people in and around Queen Mary's but also to those living further away whose A&Es and other departments in their local hospitals will also be affected.

Yesterday I visited the A&E of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. I met a man who had had a fall and believed that he had broken his ankle. The A&E was full to bursting, no wheel chairs were available and he was going to have a 6 hour wait. He was told that Queen Mary's A&E had no waiting and so he went over there!

Rejected by 10 Downing Street!!!

It appears the Prime Minister does not want anything to do with Queen Mary's Hospital. I have had an electronic petition rejected as being "impossible to understand." My nine-year old son understands the wording so what conclusion am I to draw other than my petition has been censored? The full reply from 10 Downing Street is as follows:

Hi, I'm sorry to inform you that your petition has been rejected. Your petition was classed as being in the following categories:
* Wording that is impossible to understand
Further information: Your title should be a clear call for action, preferably starting with a verb, and not a name or statement.
If you wish to edit and resubmit your petition, please follow the following link: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/itsqmh/CheEtPDabvy1B5gJq1AYqLS
You have four weeks in which to do this, after which your petition will appear in the list of rejected petitions.
Your petition reads: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to: 'stop the planned closures of the Accident & Emergency, Maternity, Intensive Care units and other vital services at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup because the consultation process was flawed. The process was flawed as the A Picture of Health questionnaire did not give respondents the opportunity to choose for Queen Mary's to be retained as a fully admitting hospital. All three options presented included downgrading Queen Mary's notwithstanding the majority of the 23 long list options advocating Queen Mary's remaining or becoming a fully / medically admitting hospital.'
The closure of Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup's A&E, Maternity, Intensive Care units and other vital services will put intolerable pressure on the other 3 outer south east London hospitals and Darent Valley Hospital. There is no spare capacity in the other hospitals and with a forecast growth in the population over the next ten years of 100,000 the above decision is short-sighted in the extreme. Those that will suffer most will be, once again, the most vulnerable. This includes the poor, the elderly, young families and the seriously ill. -- the ePetitions team

Appeal reaches £2,000

Many thanks to all those who have donated to the appeal to raise enough to fund a judicial review. £2,000 has already been raised but we still have a long way to go. The most heart-warming letter received so far was from a gentleman who wrote, "Please find enclosed a cheque for £40 which is a week's war disablement pension. I hope that you will be able to raise the amount you require to take this very important cause to so many of us to the High Court."

Please don't forget the Vigil on 20th September outside Queen Mary's Hospital. Please come and show your support anytime between 8.00am and 8.00pm. If you are able please bring a banner. There will be a petition to sign and more information about what we will be doing in the coming months.

Appeal launched to raise £75,000

WE NEED TO RAISE £75,000 TO HELP SAVE QUEEN MARY’S HOSPITAL, SIDCUP
No one is listening to us – we the people who live in the area and the businesses that operate here. We all need a fully-admitting hospital locally. As Queen Mary’s is now under imminent danger of closure of its emergency and other vital services we’re taking the fight to the High Court. But we don’t have much time.
PLEASE DONATE WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD
We need to raise £75,000 to cover the cost of a judicial review. It is a lot of money. However, 1,000 donations of £75 are achievable. Please donate as much as you can afford and tell your friends and work colleagues about this appeal. Fundraise yourself – anything – we only have until mid-October to raise the money.
DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT
Under successive governments we have lost a fully-admitting hospital at Bromley South, Orpington Hospital continues to be chipped away at, and now they’ve started on Queen Mary’s. If we do nothing we will lose vital services at our popular hospital. Don’t let them get away with it. Thank you for your help. All donations will be acknowledged.
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Please send this completed form, with payment if appropriate, to:
Independents to Save Queen Mary’s Hospital, 1a Holbrook Lane, CHISLEHURST, BR7 6PE
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Calls for Kate Grimes, Chief Executive of Queen Mary's Hospital to Resign

John Hemming-Clark of Independents to Save Queen Mary's Hospital is today calling for the resignation of Queen Mary's Hospital's Chief Executive, Kate Grimes, following the decision of the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts to adopt A Picture of Health's Option 2 which will see the closure of Queen Mary's A&E, maternity unit and other vital services.

Commenting on his call John said "This woman is supposed to be fighting for us, the patients and local residents, but instead she calls the decision "a great opportunity" having been marched down the road of cutbacks and putting patients' lives at risk with, no doubt, the promise of another cushy managerial position somewhere else a few months down the line, leaving chaos in her wake.

Once again it has been left to the patients and local residents to fight for this decision to be reversed. And fight we will."

MAJORITY OF RESIDENTS REJECT DOWNGRADING QUEEN MARY'S

THE majority of residents who responded to a consultation have rejected options to change A&E services in the area.At least a third of south east Londoners who responded to the A Picture of Health (APoH) consultation into downgrading health services in the area said that none of the proposed options were suitable.Some 2,469 residents rejected any option to close the A&E at Queen Mary Hospital, Sidcup, while only 1,949 elected to chose the most popular closure option out of the total three.

Director of the Centre for Health Management at the Imperial College London, Professor Rifat Atun, who presented the consultation results at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich last Friday, said most of the 8,374 replies were from Bromley and Bexley residents, whom he said had responded "passionately". Pointing to a slide which showed that the majority of respondents did not want any of the options, he said: "The results are quite clear for the decision makers to see and they must take the views of the public very seriously."

All options in the consultation proposed to close the A&E at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup.

Option one - to keep an A&E department in Lewisham but to stop emergency surgery or paediatric services - was chosen by 23.3 per cent respondents.

Option two - to keep A&E as it is in Lewisham but take away children's assessment and treatment services - was chosen by 17.8 per cent.

Option three, closing the A&E at Lewisham, was chosen by 16.3 per cent. From Bexley Times 26.6.08

Response to Helen Cameron, Programme Director - APoH

In her letter (News Shopper 11th June) Helen Cameron, Programme Director for A Picture of Health unintentionally confirms our suspicion that the NHS bureaucrats are now seeking to give the impression that Queen Mary's Hospital's A&E admissions are now minimal, and those that there are are so low as to make keeping the A&E open unwarranted. In stating that of the 41 patients on average per day over the past year having been taken by ambulance to Queen Mary's only 2 to 3 were "blue light", i.e. requiring A&E services, she contradicts the statistics in the APoH consultation document which states that approximately 50% of A&E patients require A&E services.

This leaves a difference per day of 18 blue light patients. Where are they going? Is the APoH report wrong or is what is in fact happening is that the London Ambulance Service has been instructed to take blue light emergencies to one of the PFI hospitals first even if they're further away?

Even with an Urgent Care Centre, there will still be 30% of existing A&E activity that will be classed as a "very major health emergency" and will need to go to a fully admitting hospital. With Queen Mary's A&E attendances last year reaching 88,190, this means that over 26,000 very major health emergencies will have to go elsewhere. Anyone living in the Bexley, Sidcup or Chislehurst area, instead of having to travel a mile or so, would have to go an average 6 1/4 miles further to Princess Royal. It's one thing for the London Ambulance Service to claim its ability to get patients to hospital within target times, it's quite another for a bed to be available at a hospital that is 99.5% full.

If Ms Cameron feels her proposals foresee a bright future then she's looking through a very cloudy crystal ball indeed.