Community Hospitals

Phillip Lee Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on securing this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) on gaining her place on the Front Bench. I wish her luck in her new role.

We are discussing community hospitals, which provide an important service in offering care to all our communities. I think there could be a renaissance in community hospital provision in the coming decades, not least because the vast majority of money in the national health service is spent not on all the exciting acute and surgical kit, but on the provision of care to the chronically unwell. Where better for the chronically unwell to be treated than in their communities?

I am particularly interested in this subject because I have recently published on it—and I commend my own publication to all colleagues in the Chamber! It is a 70-page document that my office and I managed to put together, and it was published in May this year. In it, I call for the closure of some acute hospitals and for the merger of community hospitals around what is commonly described as the hub-and-spoke health care model.

I am told by some experienced and seasoned politicians that this is quite dangerous stuff. I have called in the press for the local maternity unit not to reopen, and I have argued that having a casualty department at my local district general hospital would not be in the best interests of my constituents. People may say, “Good luck with your single term in office, Phillip”, but the reality is—I am being serious here—that what I am saying is in all our best interests. I would say that it is in the interests of those on both sides of the House—it is a pity that so few Opposition Members are in their places today—that we get behind the reality of what is happening in the delivery of health care.

I have not met anyone working in the medical profession who does not support the principle of the consolidation of acute and surgical services and the provision of chronic care in community settings, so this is undeniable. If anyone meets such a person, please put them in touch with me, as I would be interested to hear the argument for the status quo.

The reality is that acute and medical/surgical care is becoming increasingly complex, increasingly expensive to deliver and, in particular, increasingly difficult to staff. Nowadays, we do not have the “Sir Tufton Bufton” general surgeon as once there was; we have different qualified surgeons within the broad field of general surgery. If I have something wrong with my upper gastro-intestinal tract, I want to go to an upper GI specialist. I do not want to go to someone who does it occasionally; I want to go to someone who does it daily. This is clearly not possible on every district general site in the country.

We are beginning to see the realities. There is a consolidation of services ongoing in the south of London. It is politically sensitive, I gather, but it is going to happen, so everybody needs to wake up to it. It has already happened in Norwich; it is happening in Cambridge; and I gather it has happened in Swindon. That this is happening everywhere around the country is, I believe, a positive move. I do not seek to make any political point or to any political capital out of it because I know that if there were a Labour Government, it would be happening in any case. I would encourage not just existing MPs, but candidates at the next election to be more honest about this. As I say, it is really in all our best interests. Ultimately, we are here to try to secure a health service that provides the very best for all our constituents.

Let me move on to my specific regional case. To provide some background, I still work as a doctor, and I intend to continue working as one—not least because one morning in Slough is enough reality to keep my feet on the ground. In that capacity, I have formed the impression that what we need on the ground in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and south-east Oxfordshire is a consolidation of acute and surgical services.

Having looked after approximately 50,000 patients in about 50 general practices throughout the Thames valley, referred patients to every acute centre and worked with every hospital except the Royal Berkshire, I feel that I may have something to say about this issue. I have concluded that we need a new hospital at junction 8/9 of the M4, and I am not alone in thinking that. Deloitte, which was paid significantly more money than I was to produce its wonderful report in 1989, reached exactly the same conclusion, and that was before Wycombe general hospital had been downgraded as a fully fledged acute surgical site.

I am in favour of the retention of all community hospitals in the region except two. One is Heatherwood, the hospital that has traditionally served my constituency— people may say that I just talk the talk, but in this instance I am walking the walk—and the other is St Mark’s in Maidenhead. I want to enhance the delivery of chronic medical services on the Brants Bridge site in Bracknell. That is the plan, and I am trying to build some grass-roots support for it. I am trying to emphasise—this brings me back to the topic of the debate—the importance of community hospitals, the importance of the services that they offer now, and the fact that they can offer enhanced services in the future.

Given an ageing and increasingly retired population and a diminishing economic position, we shall have to sell off sites to find the necessary capital funds. However, this is a positive story. We can have new acute emergency hospitals throughout the country, although I recognise that in rural areas they will have to be supported by helicopters and the like. We can provide better services, both in the community and in the central, specialised hospitals, delivering the very best health care in the 21st century. That is why I am a proud supporter of community hospitals. I hope that all Members of Parliament of all parties will step up to the plate and be honest about the situation, so that care for all patients can be improved in future.