The consultation on plans to rationalise hospital services across south-east London may be over, but the hard work on making the decision has just begun. LINDA PIPER reports.
DESPITE consultations on A Picture of Health attracting just 9,359 replies, or little over a one-per-cent response from the public, the man in charge says it was a good result.
Simon Robbins, the senior responsible
officer for the project, says: "It compares positively with other NHS consultations."
But the coming weeks will see more public activity on the proposals to radically alter the way services are provided at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup; Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich; Princess Royal Hospital, Farnborough, and Lewisham Hospital.
Tomorrow a draft integrated assessment report will be published.
This is an independent assessment of how the three options, and any variations on the options if necessary, will affect the community.
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The assessment is being carried out by specialist consultants Matrix together with Professor Sue Atkinson, a former director of public health.
They will look at the impact on health and the inequality of people's health in different communities, such as in deprived areas.
And they will also assess how the proposals will affect different communities, such as ethnic and religious minorities and people with different sexual orientations.
A separate consultant, Operational Research in Health, will look at the transport implications for ambulances, public transport and car drivers.
This will include how easy it would be to get to the services at different hospitals, and how long journeys would take.
Around 40 workshops involving community groups have fed information into the consultants' work.
The consultants will also be putting forward ideas on how any problems can be eased.
This may mean the primary care trusts working with Transport for London to create new bus routes, or alter existing ones, to meet public need.
At the end of this month, the joint health overview and scrutiny committee meets to assess the evidence it has heard over previous months, and give its formal response to the
options.
The committee consists of two councillors from Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lewisham, Lambeth, Southwark and West Kent.
The meeting is public and is being held at 6pm on May 20 at Woolwich Town Hall, in Wellington Street, Woolwich.
Early next month, members of the joint committee of primary care trusts (JCPCT) from Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham, will have a one-day workshop with clinicians, health experts, patient groups and representatives of the public, who will set the criteria for making the final decision.
There will be a separate financial appraisal.
In mid-June, Imperial College London, which is analysing all the consultation responses, will release its report and there will be public meetings, with question-and-answer sessions on how it carried out the analysis and how it reached its conclusions.
Also in June, the financial case for the changes will be updated, and Mr Robbins, will make his recommendations to the JCPCT.
In mid-July the JCPCT will meet, in public, to make its decision on which option, or variation of an option, it has chosen to implement.
Once that decision is made, the joint health overview and scrutiny committee can still refer the decision to the Health Secretary, if it feels the consultation was flawed, or the decision made is not in the best interests of the public.
THE OPTIONS
All three options put forward in the A Picture of Health consultations included the removal of emergency services from Queen Mary's Hospital and making it a centre for planned surgery.
All three also identified Queen Elizabeth and Princess Royal hospitals as centres for emergency services, including maternity and A&E.
There were three alternative proposals for Lewisham Hospital: create a hospital similar to the Queen Mary's; create a hospital for medical not surgical emergencies and without
maternity services, or one offering the full range of emergency services.
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