CONCERNS from Redditch’s MP that children’s hospital services are unsafe has been rejected by health chiefs.
Karen Lumley expressed her fears in a letter to constituents which discussed the outcome of the recent Clinical Senate report.
She said: “As you may be aware the Clinical Senate have now reported back, and concluded ‘that there is an unsustainable model of acute services across Worcestershire which warrants a need for fundamental change and improvement’.
“In their view children’s services are unsafe with concern also shown for the safety of the A&E departments.”
But Dr Jonathan Wells, chairman of Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said the MP must have been “confused”.
During a public question and answer session at the annual general meeting of the CCG on Wednesday (July 8), he said: “I think the MP may be a little confused. The services are currently safe.”
“We have very clear monitoring in place and we do know that in the future there is going to be a problem, but they are currently safe.”
The Clinical Senate report was part of the reconfiguration of the county’s hospital services which is looking at how to ensure they are viable long-term.
A separate panel of clinicians is regularly monitoring the safety of services and they say while they are ‘fragile’ they are safe.
In response, Mrs Lumley said: “I have received a lot of correspondence on the Alex over the years and wanted to write to all the constituents who had contacted me about this so that they could have the opportunity to feed into the process. I have always pushed for the people of Redditch to have their say and I felt it was important to give people the facts as I saw them.
“When I said services were deemed unsafe this was merely reflecting the assessment the Care Quality Commission had made of the sustainability and suitability of the current model.”
