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Delight over DGH victory
THE battle to keep full maternity services at the DGH has been won.
The Independent Reconfiguration Panel which carried out an inquiry in to plans to centralise acute maternity at Hastings this week ruled that separate units should be maintained at the DGH and Conquest.
And the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, says he has accepted the panel's findings in full.
Save the DGH campaigners, led by MP Nigel Waterson and housewife Liz Walke, were delighted at the announcement.
The campaign had been gearing up to take the matter to the High Court for a Judicial Review had the panel gone against them.
But East Sussex Downs and Weald and Hastings Primary Care Trusts, which were proposing the single site maternity plan, have accepted the panel's decision and have a month to draw up a new plan for maternity services which includes maternity consultants at both Eastbourne and Hastings.
The PCTs carried out a controversial consultation exercise over the proposal - now known to have cost 400,000 - but drew criticism for limiting the number of options they were prepared to consider.
The Independent Reconfiguration Panel was brought in in May to talk to hospital staff, patients, trust members and MPs. The panel's report, published yesterday, says East Sussex Downs and Weald and Hastings and Rother Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) must keep consultant-led maternity, special care baby and inpatient gynaecology services at both hospitals, not just at Hastings as planned.
Dr Peter Barrett, the IRP chair, said, "The needs of local women and their families were at the heart of this review. Having considered all the evidence available, visited both hospitals and met with a wide range of local people, we concluded that women's access to, and choice of, services would be seriously compromised if the proposals were implemented."
The IRP decided the 21-mile journey from the DGH to Hastings could be dangerous for women, especially when they were transferred unexpectedly, as for an emergency Caesarean. Its report also said the distance would be time-consuming for maternity staff and families.
The panel, brought in by the Secretary of State at the behest of the East Sussex Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee - the local NHS watchdog - said the decision to move consultant-led maternity was mainly driven by the PCTs trying to address staffing problems.
Consultants from Eastbourne and Hastings described being overstretched and both PCTs said maternity services were at "the margin of safety". Women had been diverted to Hastings several times already due to staff shortages.
The IRP agreed that there needed to be changes in staffing to ensure safety but said a single site for maternity was not the best way to achieve this, instead recommending using higher-tier midwives to support junior staff.
Vanessa Harris, the interim chief executive of both PCTs, said yesterday that, despite the decision, change was still needed at the hospitals, as the IRP had acknowledged. But she pledged the PCTs to meet the deadline of drawing up an alternative proposal for the future of maternity services within a month.
She said, "The IRP's advice contains some very useful observations and I confirm that we accept its recommendations."
The PCTs had, she said, weighed up the competing problems in proposing to base all consultant-led maternity care in Hastings but had faced a tough and very close decision.
Ms Harris added, "The IRP exists in order to ensure that tough decisions like this can be subject to an independent second opinion. This is an example of NHS decision-making working as it should."
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Weather for Eastbourne
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 13 C to 22 C
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