Board must take responsibility
I CANNOT believe the Trust which runs our hospital has spent £4 million on management consultants.
The hospital’s finances for the current year are in dire straits because they didn’t manage to break even by the end of the last financial year. Is it any surprise when £4 million has been spent on management consultants?
From what I understand, taxpayers’ money is given to hospitals to run their hospitals efficiently and safely.
This is the board of director’s responsibility. And for doing this there are rewards, financial rewards for the Trust.
So if either things aren’t being done right, like showing correct audits or just plain overspending, the Trust (and consequently our local hospital, the DGH) is effectively penalised as the next financial year has to give greater savings. Are these the savings which the chief executive has been talking about?
If so, why then should it be the front-line core services at the DGH which stands to be lost or downgraded?
Talk of specialist services is all very well but we want local core services provided at the DGH - the NHS hospital services which should be there if an emergency arises, like having a heart attack (any kind of heart attack), a stroke, maternity and paediatrics etc.
Where treatment is needed in an emergency and minutes matter, these are the services which cannot be removed from the DGH.
Even in these straitened times, these cannot be lost or downgraded, as basically it’s not safe.
If money is tight, you pay for the essentials first and then add on other services if you can afford it. The core services at the DGH are non-negotiable.
If this current board cannot deliver these services, and using management consultants may suggest they can’t, why don’t they admit it and stand down?
They can then let others who live locally, who are totally committed to the town’s hospital, and familiar with our terrible travel times on local roads, not to mention public transport between the two hospitals, strive to keep not only the core services at the DGH but improve on all the areas they have fallen down on in the past few years.
We have some wonderful staff and want Eastbourne DGH to be a centre for excellence for all the local area – not just Eastbourne.
LIZ WALKE
Chair, Save the DGH Campaign
Eastbourne
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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Ashawed
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 03:48 PMHello Liz, I sympathise with you. What has to be noted here, though, is the fact that these people hire others to do a job for which they originally were elected so that if it goes wrong they have the ability to point a finger elsewhere rather than be directly responsible. However, with such an enormous cost revealed, it's obviously gone wrong with a vengeance!
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