WEST CORNWALL HEALTHWATCH
Co-ordinator: Marna Blundy, 4 Botallack Moor, St Just, Penzance, Cornwall TR19 7QH
Tel: 01736 788106
email: westcornwallhealthwatch@yahoo.co.uk
PRESS STATEMENT
5TH December 2005
West Cornwall HealthWatch has discovered that the NHS in Cornwall is now refusing to fund operations considered “non-urgent”. A letter copied to HealthWatch states that
“…..we are only able to fund patients who present as clinically urgent or who need to be treated in order to meet National Plan waiting time targets (including a safety margin of two weeks). We are not in a position to fund activity where patients have been brought in ahead of time. I regret to inform you that in order to ensure probity and equality, this decision covers all secondary care activity.”
The implication for patients is that many will now have to go on waiting lists for hospital treatment, not because the surgeons or beds are not available, but because the Primary Care Trusts will not pay for their treatment.
West Cornwall HealthWatch spokesperson Marna Blundy has responded with astonishment:
“I begin to wonder what sort of society, and in what century, we are living. I fear that there will be large numbers of patients now forced to wait many months for treatment, simply because the PCTs will not fund them. The surgeons want to treat their patients as soon as possible, on the grounds both of efficiency and of compassion. This ruling means that they will now be forced to create waiting lists where before there were none. It may result in surgeons and their teams having time on their hands because they are not allowed to do the work they want to do. This will be very good news for private practice, but is not good for those who cannot afford to go privately, or who want to retain an NHS that provides for all, free at the point of need. This is, sadly, just further evidence of our mounting concern about the state of acute health services in the county. HealthWatch is just one of an increasing chorus of voices calling for an independent review into the provision of acute services in Cornwall. Without such an independent review, I fear we shall see the NHS locally disappear into a black hole of its own making.”