Hospital consultation meeting

Mike Penning joined Hemel residents at stormy public meeting.

Mike Penning attended an often stormy public meeting at St John’s Church Hall, Boxmoor last night where highly-paid executives and consultants from the Hospital Trust attempted to explain how Hemel Hempstead benefits from the closure of the Accident and Emergency department and other major departments at the hospital.

In a week which has seen yet more hospital wards closed, Mike Penning said:

“The whole meeting was a farce, the Trust management has no intention of listening to the people of Hemel and appears to have already made up its mind on all the issues. Typically they attempted to focus the meeting on the limited services that would remain in Hemel rather than on the concerns of the residents of Hemel – namely the services that are being, and already have been, lost.

“They consistently try to sell it to us as an improvement when clearly we are being offered all the services we already have but at a much more inconvenient location – with less car parking and older buildings.”

He added:

“Their latest scheme is that Hemel will have a ‘Local General Hospital’ – this is a new invention and is not to be confused with a ‘General Hospital’ as it will, for example, offer no Accident and Emergency. As was pointed out by one member of the public last night, when you examine it closely, it looks very similar to what in the past has been called a ‘cottage hospital’….and this for an area the size of Dacorum with a population of 140,000 or so and set to grow significantly.

“Instead of an A&E we are destined to have a new ‘Urgent Care Centre’ run by GPs, but many of us left the meeting thinking that there is not much difference between this and what is already available at many GP surgeries.

“The reality is that we are being offered a centralised A&E that is not by any means central to the area it covers and that offers no improvement to services than already offered by our own General Hospital.

“Despite the apparent pointlessness, I do urge all residents to take a few minutes to take part in the consultation exercise as, although it may seem like a done deal, if we don’t take part it just gives the Trust more ammunition to use against us.”