A NUMBER of the options for health care in the Hywel Dda area involve closing or removing services from Glangwili and / or Prince Philip Hospitals, consultation documents have revealed.
As The Herald reported last week, Hywel Dda UHB is considering a number of options following a series of public engagements last year.
The plans, which were described as ‘a once in a lifetime opportunity’ by Medical Director Dr Philip Kloer, appeared to mainly involve transferring more hospital services into the community where appropriate.
This was as part of a strategy that the Health Board was looking into, to help solve an acute recruitment problem which is putting a great deal of pressure on the way that the Heath Board operates – and is leading to an untenable level of use of costly temporary staff to plug gaps and services.
However, of the nine options which have been listed at this stage, five show Glangwili Hospital closing entirely, while four also show Prince Philip close its doors.
In the instances where a hospital would be closed, it is envisaged that the service provision would be replaced by 24/7 urgent provision, and ‘community hubs’.
Other options include having planned surgery at the hospitals, or even closing Withybush, Glangwili and Prince Philip and replacing them with one centrally-located hospital.
Llanelli MP Nia Griffith said: “I will always speak up for getting the best possible access to hospital services for people in the Llanelli constituency, and for keeping services at Prince Philip Hospital.
“When I sought reassurances from the Chair of Hywel Dda, she explained that the health board is currently looking at a whole range of options, and stressed the considerable investment that has gone into Prince Philip and Pride in the services there.
“I will be keeping a close eye on the situation.”
Dr Phil Kloer, Medical Director and Director of Clinical Services Strategy said: “We are currently in the process of assessing, testing, refining and narrowing down potential options and we cannot yet confidently say to the public ‘these are the options and we believe them to be viable, safe and offer an improvement to what we already have’. We should be in that position by the spring and then we will come back out to the public for a formal consultation so they can let us have their views.
“We have taken an open and inclusive approach, allowing a wide range of people – staff, partners, patient representatives – to challenge our thinking and be involved beyond the engagement phase (which was held in the summer 2017) and into option development. We’ve taken this approach to co-produce this consultation at every stage possible. We understand this will stimulate debate and speculation in the community as people want to know right now what this might mean for their community based healthcare or their local hospital, but we believe this has been the right thing to do to really take people with us and involve as many people as possible.”
Plaid Cymru, Mid and West AM, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Simon Thomas said: “These leaked documents once again call into question the commitment of the Labour government into providing a health service for rural Wales and in the west.
“Hywel Dda health bosses appear obsessed with service change and re-organisation rather than getting on with the job of running health services. It’s only a few years since the last set of major changes, justified on the grounds of ‘sustainability’ and allegedly for the long term.
“Now once again the board are considering more changes, like a gambling addict convinced just one more bet will solve their problems. Trying to have a health service with no hospitals locally is something no other country would even attempt, but that doesn’t appear to stop this relentless ideology of pretending you can deal with an elderly population by substituting hospital beds in exchange for a few extra community health staff with ipads.
“Plaid Cymru have a long-term health plan to recruit more doctors and nurses for the Welsh NHS including our hospital services.”
Plaid Cymru AM Simon Thomas has tabled an emergency question in the National Assembly to seek answers from the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Vaughan Gething.
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