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Hospital decision is simply baffling

Vic Barlow
2/ 4/2008

I’VE READ the assurances of Mike Pyrah, chief executive of the Primary Care Trust, concerning the future of A&E at Macclesfield General.

I’ve scrutinised the question and answer session with John Wibrahams, chief executive of East Cheshire NHS Trust, and I’m none the wiser.

Not long ago, 53,000 people signed the biggest petition ever held in the borough to prevent the closure of A&E.

Coachloads of concerned residents took time off work to attend meetings, often announced on the last minute in inconvenient locations at awkward times of the day.

The NHS Trust, we were told, was in debt up to its scanners and needed to dispose of services we all desperately wanted, such was their financial emergency.

Now, apparently, they have sufficient cash to fund a brand new facility no one asked for. How does that work?

How does a cash-strapped NHS find the means to provide additional services in a hospital under threat? Where’s the logic?

We already have an established A&E department and the paint hasn’t yet dried on the brand new super surgery, providing more services than the old GP practices ever could.

So why the rush to spend money on a walk-in centre?

We had to scream from the rooftops to prevent the closure of A&E. Now we are being given a brand new walk-in facility we don’t need.

I’m not one to swab a gift horse in the mouth, but it just doesn’t add up. One minute hospital funds are in dire straits, next thing we’re getting a multi-million pound facility no one’s sure we need.

I just don’t get it.

The views expressed on this page are Vic Barlow's and not necessarily those of the Express


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Most recent 2 of 21 user comments

   Gordon, attack?, what attack?, your so dramatic.
slinkywizard, Macclesfield
23/04/2008 at 11:14
   Dear me Pete, perhaps one day you will allow someone to hold a differing opinion to yours, without trying to make an attack on the writer. Just to shut you up. My parents attend the super clinic at Waters Green at the Park Lane Surgery, and they are fully aware of the facilities, and the cock ups. I return to the UK at frequent and regular intervals and remain on the books of the same practise. At the doctors no problem, but the clinics. Try the Podiatry and ring the number for an appointment, you get an answer phone, which does not return your calls. They went in personally to book an appointment, to find that; they could not. The booking desk informed them that they could not make an appointment as that facility had been bid for, and outsourced to Saunders Square, where ever that is. Now that is a stupid layer of bureaucracy at Waters Green.

As for a lot of the facility available, Blood samples, and the anticoagulant clinics, to name but two, are manned by hospital staff who now have nowhere left at the hospital to work from. The Pharmacy apparently is owned and run by the Private firm who built the building, and the largest slice of the building is in the hands of a Private Health company. So please before claiming that a person does not have a clue, or is being silly, just turn around and look in the mirror and see who that applies to.
Gordon (Ex.Pat).
22/04/2008 at 13:23
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