It's Almost Unanimous!!!

At last the senior doctors at City Hospital have expressed their verdict on the Trust's proposals for a new hospital on the Grove Lane site, and in the interim moving inpatient Paediatric and Emergency Surgery and Trauma beds to Sandwell.

95 out of 98 effectively said YES to the new hospital and NO to moving the beds. For the mathematically inclined this is a 96.9% majority of the votes cast. 164 ballot papers were issued using the current medical staffing list for City Hospital giving an absolute majority of 57.9% or in other words if all the non-voters had voted against the motion it would still have been carried. The count today was supervised by an independent referee.

We now have a situation where however flawed the consultation, the proposal to move the Surgical beds was rejected 47.2% to 31.4% and the Paediatric beds 45.6% to 29% by those in the community consulted. In view of the very obvious ethnic issues the Commission for Racial Equality is involved. The Emergency Surgical proposal has been strongly criticised by the City Council Health Scrutiny committee and referred to the Secretary of State, and now the consultants at City have spoken with one voice endorsing the view of those consulted.

Can there be a louder or clearer message to those managing the Trust?

Would the majority of senior doctors have rejected the interim reconfiguration proposals if they had felt there were essential reasons for moving the beds to Sandwell?

Now is the time for the Trust to be reviewing the situation. There ARE other options. PROTECT the emergency services to the local community. The people NEED them.

Can somebody, anybody tell me why oh why are we having to fight to prevent something really important being taken from those with the greatest need?

I now understand what Julian Tudor Hart meant. He is an eminent and greatly respected Welsh GP. He is a youthful octogenarian but an angry one who invented the" inverse care law" back in 1971.

This law states that "those people most in need of health care tend to receive the poorest service."
This must not happen in this great City of Birmingham to our people, and we must do all in our power to prevent it happening.

A final point, it would be good to hear from some of you reading this blog. If you click on comments at the end of this piece you can have your say. I know people are worried about identifying themselves, so just adopt a pseudonym or perhaps use a christian name. This website is for all those people who wish to stand up and support good hospital care for the people local to City Hospital.