Local doctors, nurses and NHS staff are proposing different ways some aspects of hospital care can be improved in South Tyneside and Sunderland as a public consultation starts today (Wednesday 5th July) and runs until the autumn.
Called ‘The Path to Excellence’, the public consultation will run for 14-and-a-half weeks until Sunday 15 October, and will focus particularly on areas of hospital care which are delivered at South Tyneside District Hospital and Sunderland Royal Hospital including:
- Three options to improve stroke services, specifically hospital (acute) care and hospital-based rehabilitation services
- Two options to improve maternity services (obstetrics), covering hospital-based birthing facilities i.e. where you would give birth to your baby and special care baby units and women’s services (gynaecology), covering inpatient surgery where you would need an overnight hospital stay
- Two options to improve children and young people’s (paediatrics, urgent and emergency) services
This period of consultation will include a series of public events and a range of ways for local people to get involved, find out more about the issues under consideration and to give their views.
The options in more detail are below:
Stroke services
Option 1
- Combine all hyperacute and acute stroke care at Sunderland Royal Hospital
- Patients from both South Tyneside and Sunderland will have their continuing hospital-based rehabilitation at Sunderland Royal Hospital before being discharged to their local community stroke teams who will provide any further rehabilitation and support locally
Option 2
- Combine all hyperacute and acute stroke care at Sunderland Royal Hospital
- After seven days patients who live in South Tyneside can be moved to South Tyneside District Hospital for continuing in-hospital rehabilitation before being discharged to their local community stroke rehabilitation team for support locally
- Sunderland patients will continue to receive their stroke rehabilitation care at Sunderland Royal Hospital before being discharged to their local community stroke rehabilitation team for support locally
Option 3
- Combine all hyperacute stroke care at Sunderland Royal Hospital
- After three days patients who live in South Tyneside can be moved to South Tyneside District Hospital for their acute stroke care and continuing in hospital rehabilitation before being discharged to their local community stroke rehabilitation team for support locally
- Sunderland patients will continue to receive their acute stroke care and in-hospital rehabilitation care at Sunderland Royal Hospital before being discharged to their local community stroke rehabilitation team for support locally
Maternity (obstetrics) and women’s healthcare (gynaecology) services
Option 1
- Retaining a consultant-led maternity unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital and continuing to provide alongside midwifery-led care for low risk births
- Developing a free-standing midwifery-led unit at South Tyneside District Hospital for low risk births
- The provision of community midwifery care, including all community antenatal and postnatal care will remain unchanged
- Providing inpatient gynaecology surgery from Sunderland Royal Hospital while continuing to provide day-case operations and outpatients consultations at both South Tyneside District and Sunderland Royal Hospitals
- Single special care baby unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital
Option 2
- Retaining a consultant-led maternity unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital and continuing to provide alongside midwifery-led care for low risk births
- The provision of community midwifery care, including all community antenatal and postnatal care will remain unchanged
- Providing inpatient gynaecology surgery from Sunderland Royal Hospital while continuing to provide day-case operations and outpatients consultations at both South Tyneside District and Sunderland Royal Hospitals
- Single special care baby unit at Sunderland Royal Hospital
The clinical teams do not have a preferred option for maternity and women’s healthcare services as they feel both options offer the opportunity to deliver better patient care, make positive changes to patient health and help reduce health inequalities.
Children and young people’s healthcare (urgent and emergency paediatrics) services
Option 1
- Provision of a seven-day, 12 hour (8am to 8pm) paediatric emergency department and children’s short stay assessment unit at South Tyneside District Hospital with 24 hour, seven days a week paediatric emergency department at Sunderland Royal Hospital
Option 2
- Development of a nurse-led paediatric minor injury or illness service between 8am and 8pm at South Tyneside District Hospital with a 24 hour, seven days a week paediatric emergency department at Sunderland Royal Hospital
Dr Shaz Wahid, Medical Director for South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust, said this was an important time for the NHS in South Tyneside and Sunderland as a consultation provided the opportunity to make big improvements to hospital services and patient care.
Dr Wahid said: “We want to explain the current challenges we have around how these services are being delivered at the moment, and present options on the different ways our clinical teams think we could solve some of the problems we have. We need to be clear that we simply cannot continue as we are and this means some services will be delivered differently in the future.
“We will share the information we’ve used to come up with our proposals, for example, the best practice clinical evidence from the Royal Colleges, feedback from patient experiences and engagement, to name but a few.”
Dr Matthew Walmsley, a local GP and Chair of NHS South Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), he understood that local people might be concerned when they hear of the need to make some changes to the way some local services are provided, and urged people to find out more before forming an opinion.
He said: “We really hope people will take the opportunity to listen to the issues, think about how the options we present will help tackle them and tell us how these potential changes may affect them, or if they have ideas about how they can be improved. We don’t expect people to give their responses immediately so these first few weeks are about helping people understand the circumstances around these particular services we need to change.”
There are a number of ways local people can get involved including public question and answer sessions, discussion events and opportunities to look at particular service proposals in detail, as well as a paper and online survey.
Information is published on the Path to Excellence programme website, including an independent travel impact review, current hospital service quality indicators and information about resources and finances.
Ian Martin, Medical Director for City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, said the consultation had been planned to allow local people lots of opportunities to get involved in the discussions.
He said: “We want people to understand that we have clinical issues driving these proposals and any future changes to the way services are organised would only be made in order to improve the quality and safety of those services for the future.
“Any changes need to make the best use of our most important resource – our clinical staff – so we can meet the healthcare needs of our patients both now and in the future.”
Dr Ian Pattison, a local GP and Chair of NHS Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “This is a very important opportunity for local people to hear directly from their own local doctors, nurses and therapists who are working in these services. This will allow everybody to understand the challenges we face due to the way in which these particular services are currently arranged and critically how we think we can improve them.
“People care passionately about our NHS and we all have that in common. I hope that we can discuss these often complex issues together so we can make improvements that will have a real and lasting positive impact on people’s health outcomes.”
The proposals will be published on the programme website on Wednesday 5 July – the first day of the public consultation – and local clinical leaders will present them at a series of planned public events.
Feedback from the public will be analysed into themes and publicly reported to ensure it influences the final decisions, which will be made by the two clinical commissioning groups later in early 2018.
The Path to Excellence programme is led by a partnership of local NHS organisations including NHS South Tyneside CCG, NHS Sunderland CCG, South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust and City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust – working together as the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Partnership.
Between them, they are responsible for commissioning (planning, choosing and buying) and delivering many of the major healthcare services across the area, including the healthcare services that are the subject of this NHS public consultation.