Kettering General Hospital

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Friday 9th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I thank Mr Speaker, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for granting me the privilege of holding this debate, and I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) to his place. May I also take this opportunity to thank, on behalf of local residents throughout the borough of Kettering, all those who work at Kettering general hospital, whether they be nurses, doctors, consultants or ancillary staff, for all the work they do on behalf of local people. It is hugely appreciated. Many people at Kettering general hospital have worked there for a very long time—20, 30 or, in some instances, 40 years. The hospital is very much embedded at the heart of the local community.

I thank Lorene Read, the chief executive, and Steve Hone, the chairman of the trust, for all the work that they have put into the hospital and for the time they have given me over recent weeks to talk about the hospital’s future. I also thank Councillor Russell Roberts, the leader of Kettering borough council, for his close involvement in trying to sort out the hospital’s future.

It is my privilege to have been elected to serve as the Member of Parliament for Kettering, to stand up and speak out on behalf of local people about issues important to them. There is probably nothing more important to local people than the future of our much loved and badly needed local hospital in Kettering.

The nub of the points that I want to make is that local people simply will not put up with any prospect whatsoever of any downgrade to the accident and emergency facilities or the maternity wing at Kettering general hospital. Those are two highly valued, much prized departments and whoever plans the future of the hospital simply must not downgrade those two vital facilities, because they do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances.

Kettering is growing extremely rapidly. Over the past decade, the borough of Kettering was sixth out of 348 districts throughout the country in the rapidity of household growth, and 31st in population growth. Few other parts of the country are growing as fast as Kettering. We have always needed our hospital and we now need it more badly than ever.

On public sector transport, the connections between Kettering and the rest of Northamptonshire, let alone the rest of the country, especially to the other acute hospital sites in the south-east midlands, are not good. The road between Kettering and Northampton, the A43, is the most dangerous and most congested in Northamptonshire. The idea that facilities could simply be moved out of Kettering and down the road to Northampton does not work for the staff or patients at the hospital. I say to the Minister that because of the demographics, the increasing age of the population, the rate of population growth, the geography of Northamptonshire and the crucial need for, but lack of, available future capital investment, any rearrangement of acute service provision by the NHS in the south-east midlands must not involve any downgrading of the A and E and maternity departments at Kettering.

The Minister needs to be aware that Kettering general hospital is much loved and badly needed. It has been in existence for 115 years. Local people have been born there, have seen their relatives treated there and have died there. Everyone in Kettering has, at one point or another, been through that hospital. It is a hospital embedded in the local community like few others.

As of today, Kettering general hospital employs 3,100 staff. It has more than 600 in-patient and day-case beds, 17 operating theatres, seven intensive treatment unit beds and three high-dependency unit beds. The obstetric unit delivers about 3,800 babies a year and is where my two children were delivered some years ago. The midwifery department is growing at a rate of between 5% and 7% a year. It includes a neonatal intensive care unit for babies, which is a sort of special care baby unit-plus. There is also a new £30 million treatment centre with enhanced paediatric facilities, which is opening next year.

Kettering general hospital has a level 2 trauma unit in its 24/7 A and E department, which is consultant-led. It currently has five consultants and two locums. Consultants are on site until 11 o’clock in the evening and are on call until 8 o’clock in the morning. Some 3,200 orthopaedic patients—people with hip and knee problems—go through the hospital every year, as well as 2,137 trauma patients. The hospital has a leading endoscopy unit, which basically does bowel screening, and a state-of-the-art cardiac facility, which is now the primary angiogram centre for Northamptonshire and south Leicestershire.

It is true that Kettering general hospital cannot provide the required level of treatment for severe head injuries or severe burns. Such patients are transferred, often by helicopter, to University hospital Coventry down the road, which has a level 3 trauma facility. However, Kettering general hospital is where most trauma patients need to go. Its location, right next to the A14, which is one of the busiest arteries in the midlands, is ideal for the all-too-many road traffic accidents that occur.

Healthier Together is leading a review of acute hospital provision in the south-east midlands that involves the five hospitals in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Milton Keynes and Luton: Kettering general hospital, Northampton general hospital, Bedford hospital, Milton Keynes hospital and Luton and Dunstable university hospital. Kettering general hospital is the most northerly of those. It is 16 miles from Northampton, 24 miles from Bedford, 34 miles from Milton Keynes and 47 miles from Luton and Dunstable. If we lose our A and E or if it is downgraded, it will simply be too far for people to go to those other facilities.

Healthier Together set up six clinical working groups led by consultants, which produced seven highly theoretical draft models for the way in which acute hospital services could be reconfigured. There are now two preferred models. The problem is that, in one way or another, both the preferred models involve effectively downgrading two of the five hospitals. At the moment, the five hospitals all have A and E, trauma, emergency surgery, complex and elective surgery, acute medicine, ITU, in-patient paediatrics, obstetrics, out-patient diagnostics and in-patient re-ablement services. Under the draft proposals, two of them would not have all those services, and my campaign is to ensure that Kettering is not one of those two. It would be an absolute tragedy for local people were we to lose our ITU, our acute medicine facility, our level 2 trauma unit or our emergency surgery unit, or if the much needed recent investment and next year’s investment in improved paediatrics were moved away from Kettering. Up with it local people simply will not put.

One of my big worries about Healthier Together is that, although a lot of well meaning clinicians are leading the review—I know the Minister is a clinician of some repute himself—they need to realise that they are dealing with patients who do not move around as much as clinicians might. Although it might in theory be very nice to have shiny, brand-new hospitals in ideal locations, people do not live like that. Patients and staff need to have straightforward, easy access to hospital facilities.

There is meant to be public engagement in the Healthier Together review process, led by the so-called patient and public advisory group. I am sure that the individuals on that group are doing their best, but I am afraid they are hardly representative of the population of the south-east midlands. I have been on the comprehensive Healthier Together website today and read through all the material, including the minutes of the patient and public advisory group’s recent meetings. The most recent one whose minutes have been published was in March, so the minutes of a lot of meetings have not yet been published. Of the 17 individuals present at that March meeting, one was from Kettering and five were from Milton Keynes. Reading through the material provided by Healthier Together makes it clear that the process is led and dominated by Milton Keynes. I have nothing against people in Milton Keynes, and I am sure they need health services like everyone else, but there are five acute hospitals in the south-east midlands, not one, and the patients of all five deserve fair representation throughout the process. I invite the Minister to look at the Healthier Together review and see whether he is satisfied that patients and clinicians from across the region are being fully engaged in the process. My contention is that patients, doctors, nurses and ancillary staff from Kettering are not fully involved, which they should be.

One of the key points that has been missing from the review so far is recognition of the importance of access to health care facilities. Healthier Together states in its papers that it has set up a travel and transport working group, which has started to investigate the possible effects on journey times if health services are reconfigured. It states:

“An early task included commissioning independent experts to analyse journey times to hospital by private car and emergency ambulance. That analysis focused on travel at peak rush hours—from 7-9 am and from 4-7 pm.”

We do not need an independent expert to tell us that it is almost impossible to drive from Kettering to Northampton down the A43 during peak time without becoming part of an elongated car park, or that if a nurse had to move to Northampton she would find it very difficult to get there in the morning by public transport. There is no rail link between the two towns, and the bus service is intermittent. We do not need an independent expert to tell us that Kettering residents who want to visit an elderly relative in hospital would find it very difficult, without public transport, to go to Northampton, Bedford, Luton or Milton Keynes.

Evidence—if we need more—of the pressure placed on Kettering hospital by the growth in local population was provided a few weeks ago by Monitor’s intervention in order that the hospital improve its A and E targets. Kettering hospital is treating 10% more A and E patients year in, year out; it is treating more A and E patients this year than last year, but it does not treat 95% within four hours and is in significant breach of statutory targets. Monitor has intervened, quite rightly, and told the hospital to sort that out, which I am confident it will sort out. That situation is indicative of the growth in the local population and the pressure that that is putting on local A and E facilities.

I am grateful for the chance to put the concerns of local people about our hospital directly to the Minister on the Floor of the House, and let me tell him, as plainly as I can, that the situation is completely unacceptable to everyone in Kettering, whatever political party they support or even if they support no political party. We will not put up with our accident and emergency service or maternity wings being downgraded.

Local staff at the hospital are doing their best in difficult circumstances against a background of one of the fastest population increases in the country. Healthier Together needs to get its act together because Kettering hospital is going to have a bright future, whatever clinicians in Milton Keynes might say.