Row Over Lack of Consultation Over Hospital Closure

12.34.47pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 8th Sep 2004

There was a heated meeting at York House on Tuesday when the Chief Executive of the West Middlesex hospital publicly apologised for pressing ahead with a ward closure (Lampton Ward) without consulting the local community represented by the newly established Public and Patient Forum.

The Chief Executive, Gail Wannell, explained that she had been obliged to take the decision quickly since an acute shortage of staff was creating clinical safety problems. She described new arrangements based on day treatment rather than overnight stays.

At the meeting there were some strong expressions of unhappiness over the hospital: in particular, failure of booking systems causing patients to turn up when doctors are on leave and major handicaps to parking faced by the disabled.

Vincent Cable who was at the meeting said: "this new Forum is already proving its worth by holding hospital management to account for their failure to comply with their statutory requirement to consult. It is entirely understandable that those responsible for life and death decisions have to move quickly and there may well have been a genuine safety issue here. But the Forum is right to insist that hospital managers cannot get into the habit of ignoring the law under which they operate".

"There are clearly serious staffing problems at the hospital and it is right that the community should be told what is going on".