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Factsheet

Save Lewisham Hospital Factsheet (download .pdf):

1 – Unsafe – Lewisham is bigger than the cities of Brighton or Hull, as are Greenwich and Bexley. Three boroughs with a population of 750,00 cannot be expected to have only 1 admitting hospital. And without an A&E, maternity services at Lewisham may be closed for safety reasons when the report is finalised, but the administrator refuses to acknowledge this.  He will have taken a new job by the time this plan could cost us our Maternity Unit.

2 – Neighbouring hospitals have not got the capacity to deal with Lewisham Hospital closing maternity services or an Accident and Emergency that can admit patients.  We are in the middle of a ‘baby boom’ and up to 1 in 5 patients waited longer than 4 hours at Queen Elizabeth Hospital A&E.

Yet the administrator has suggested £39million of staff cuts.  By forcing two large employers to merge (Lewisham Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital), he is increasing the size of the ‘employer unit’ to make it easier to get rid of staff.  

3 –  PFI debts – £210million of buildings at QEH and PRUH will cost the taxpayer £2.5 billion. The Special administrator refused to renegotiate this debt, and it will still be paid out of your taxes by the Department of Health. Lewisham is paying for another trust’s debt with our A&E, maternity services, children’s ward, acute surgery and 60 % of our hospital buildings- which the administrator wants to sell for £17million and use the money to pay off debts, not to invest in community services.  The people of Greenwich and Bexley should not have to pay with the loss of essential services either.  Hospitals are not profit-centres and should not be closed down as if they are supermarkets.

4 – Travel – Hospital transport on discharge is rare. If you live in Downham and have to visit patients or travel home from hospital, you will be at least 2 buses and 1 hour away from your nearest admitting hospital

5 – Broken promises from the coalition:

“We will stop the forced closure of A&E and maternity wards, so that people have better access to local services, and give mothers a real choice over where to have their baby, with NHS funding following their decisions.” Conservative Party Manifesto 2010, page 47.

“We believe that care would improve if local people had more control over how their health services were run… Local services – especially maternity wards and accident and emergency departments – keep being closed, even though local people desperately want them to stay open.” Liberal Democrat manifesto 2010 page 42

 

[I will upload a .pdf and .doc version to download asap.  Until then, please cut and paste if you want to give a hard copy to people]