Co-ordinator: Marna Blundy, 4 Botallack Moor, St Just, Penzance, Cornwall TR19 7QH
Tel: 01736 788107
email: westcornwallhealthwatch@yahoo.co.uk

PRESS STATEMENT
WEST CORNWALL HEALTH WATCH CONDEMN HAYLE CLOSURE PLANS

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust’s targeted closure of St Michael’s Hospital. Hayle comes as deeply shocking news. But it can hardly be called a shock.

The whole of the RCHT’s dealings with NHS users in West Cornwall for many years past only makes sense as part of an underlying strategy to run down hospital services beyond their single Truro site.

Time after time they have denied any such intention. But their actions have spoken much louder than their words. The “options” paper which they considered in May 2005 actually put their preferences into words: their first choice for Hayle was closure; their first choice for West Cornwall Hospital was an end to emergency services.

That was after year upon year of exchanges with West Cornwall HealthWatch and other bodies, that had left them in no doubt about what the people of west Cornwall saw as crucial to their own health and well-being. And it was in contemplation several months before they themselves had any inkling of the financial disaster towards which they were sleepwalking..

Now they want to patch up the damage their financial obtuseness has brought about by bringing in measures that were the targets of their strategic obtuseness. That is their idea of a fresh start.

Their moves to this end are typical in other ways. There is the manipulative attempt to get senior clinical staff to find justification for closing St Michael’s, as if the management – as well they might be – were a bit embarrassed at having to make the case themselves.

There is the secretive timing: all this was in preparation while the County Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee were being fed warm words about “working together” and the “sharing” of proposals, with not a mention of what lay in store for St Michael’s. That is their notion of partnership with public representatives and the people they represent.

St Michael’s is no declining asset: it has built up an enviable reputation for elective surgery, and its record for cleanliness and care is one from which most other hospitals have something to learn. Patients whose cases are assigned there go there with confidence, and come back full of praise. Do the RCHT management know how to value these things? How would we tell?

The lessons of their one-sided public dialogue, their financial complacency, their indifference to authentic patient choice are all displayed once more in this disastrous endgame. It is time that an Independent Review asked and answered the questions we have all been asking for far too long.

Meanwhile, the closure of St Michael’s has to be resisted. There will be attempts, as usual, to divide and rule us, to hint at a pay-off for West Cornwall in its neighbour’s misfortune, leading to a stay of execution there. We will not be fooled, and we will not be moved.

Let’s hear it for Hayle!