Full press release on Maternity Services at WCH

I published a quote from Stephen Eames earlier today about maternity services at West Cumberland Hospital (WCH).

As the 12 month review comes to an end the NHS has been making very positive noises about the future of consultant-led maternity at WCH.

I think the whole press release from North Cumbria Health and Care is worth quoting. It reads as follows.


"Maternity 12 Month Review Period To End Amid Positive Progress

The 12 month review of maternity services at West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven will end this month.

There has been positive progress over the year, and there will now be a period of review before NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Governing Body makes any decision about the long term future of services.

Consultant-led maternity services and the development of ‘alongside midwife-led care’ will continue to operate and there will be no changes in the coming months simply because the 12 month period has ended. There will be a review and a report to support a decision early in the summer.

There has been some improvement in recruitment to maternity services as well as the recent appointment of paediatric consultants; this was an area that was making the sustainability of services challenging. 

Maternity and Paediatrics services were also rated as good in a recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) report, and the most recent CQC national survey of patient experience, where women were asked about their experiences during labour and birth and the quality of antenatal and postnatal support, rated the Trust as good, or as better, than the national average.

Work with the community and Third Sector through co-production has become established and some areas are making a real difference.

Stephen Eames, who is the leader of the North Cumbria Health and Care System and chief executive of North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, said:

“There has certainly been positive progress over the last 18 months. The CQC report published in November was very positive about the services and about how women feel about their care, and we are making some real progress in recruitment. We are also working very productively with the community to support maternity and paediatric services. It hasn’t been easy to establish a new way of working in co-production but we are making real strides in some areas.”

Since the Healthcare For The Future consultation in Autumn 2016 there has been considerable work to established alongside midwife-led care at both West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven and the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. In particular there has been the involvement of local new mums through the Maternity Voices Partnership.

There has been collaborative work to develop audits of the new service and on areas of service improvement, including establishing Short Stay Paediatric Assessment Units at both hospitals, which are proving popular with patients and their families as well as staff as it allows children and young people to be seen and reviewed more quickly. 

There has also been the development of co-production work with the community and staff. 

The Venerable Richard Pratt, Archdeacon of West Cumberland chairs the Working Together Steering Group. He said:

“The conversation has changed dramatically over the last 18 months, and while there has been more progress in some areas than others, the value of working together collaboratively is really paying off. There is still a long way to go and we are working to review of this type of ‘working together’, looking at how effective we have been, and how we can improve co-production in future.”

The CCG Governing Body agreed a 12 month review of progress around the longterm sustainability of consultant-led services as part of its decision making process in March 2017. This involves a group of independent clinical experts – the Independent Review Group (IRG) chaired by Bill Kirkup.

The 12 month time-limited review period started on April 1 2018 and will end on 31 March 2019. The process of reviewing data will continue for some time after this.

It is expected that the IRG will complete its review of data collected to the end of March and make recommendations in May or June. It will then be considered by the CCG Governing Body meeting in public in early summer.

Jon Rush, the chair of NHS North Cumbria CCG, said:

“We were very clear when we said we wanted to really test the sustainability of consultant-led maternity services over a longer period, and now that the 12 month period is coming to an end we look forward to receiving recommendations from the Independent Review Group about the progress that has been made. We will then reach a decision about the future of those services and we anticipate this being in the early summer.

“We know a lot of people have worked very hard to make progress, including community groups in west Cumbria such as the Voices group, who have got involved in co-production, and we are grateful for all the hard work that has taken place.”

We will continue to update our community on progress and the final decision will be clearly signposted ahead of that decision being made. Until then services will continue as they are.



 
 Notes to Editors

• Find out more about North Cumbria Health and Care System (our Integrated Care System (ICS)) on our ICS website. We are one of 14 ICS at the leading edge of integrated services in England.

• Has maternity been saved? Decisions about areas consulted on during the Healthcare For The Future Consultation were made on March 8 2017. The Maternity decision was to allow for a 12 month period of testing the progress in sustainability of consultant-led services. The 12 month period comes to an end on March 31 2019 and there will then be a period of review by the Independent Review Group (IRG) made up of expert clinicians and chaired by Bill Kirkup. It will make recommendations to NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group’s Governing Body which will be considered at a meeting in public early in the summer.

• The North Cumbria Health and Care System is made up of health and care commissioners and providers – Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, NHS England, NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group, North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, NHS Improvement, North West Ambulance Service, primary care – working in partnership with Cumbria County Council and third sector organisations. 

• More information from Julie Clayton, head of communications and engagement at NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group on 01768 245490"

Quote from Stephen Eames on maternity services at WCH

“There has certainly been positive progress over the last 18 months. The CQC report published in November was very positive about the services and about how women feel about their care, and we are making some real progress in recruitment. 

We are also working very productively with the community to support maternity and paediatric services. It hasn’t been easy to establish a new way of working in co-production but we are making real strides in some areas.” 

Stephen Eames, leader of the North Cumbria Health and Care System and chief executive of North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, quoted in a press release by North Cumbria NHS Health and Care, about the conclusion of the 12 month review into consultant-led maternity at West Cumberland Hospital.

This and other recent statements from Stephen Eames have been widely interpreted as strong hints that the review is likely to confirm that consultant-maternity at West Cumberland Hospital is sustainable and will continue.

Cervical Screening Saves LIves

Last week, as I reported here, a report to Cumbria health scrutiny committee described how health outcomes vary enormously between different parts of Cumbria.

Or in plain English, if you get cancer and you live in Copeland you are more likely to die soon from it than you would be if you lived in Eden. 

There are also significant variations between health outcomes in different parts of Copeland.

There are various reasons for these differences, some of which related to lifestyle, and some to health service issues that the local NHS is seeking to address.

But two of those reasons are

1) Residents of the areas with better outcomes for cancer patients tend to go to their doctor sooner, e.g. at an earlier stage of the disease when there is more chance of successful treatment, and

2) Residents of the areas where more people survive cancer are more likely to accept invitations to be screened for cancer.

This is the Cumbrian context relevant to today's announcement by Public Health England, unveiling a new 'Cervical Screening Saves Lives' campaign, part of the government's Long Term Plan which provides an extra £20.5 billion for the NHS.

Key facts: 

• Public Health England has launched the major new national campaign ‘Cervical Screening Saves Lives’, to increase the number of women attending their cervical screening across England. 
• The campaign will encourage women to respond to their cervical screening invitation letter, and if they missed their last screening, to book an appointment at their GP practice. 
• Around 2,600 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in England each year, and around 690 women die from the disease, which is two deaths every day. 
• It is estimated that if everyone attended screening regularly, 83 per cent of cervical cancer cases could be prevented. 
• Regular screening, which only takes a few minutes, can help stop cervical cancer before it starts, as the test identifies potentially harmful cells before they become cancerous, and ensures women get the right treatment as soon as possible. 

Why this matters

• If more people take up cancer screening - cervical screening or many other types of screening - it will save some of those people from dying well before they need to.
• For example, if every woman took part in the cervical cancer screening programme, more than 2,250 women a year would be spared from suffering this form of cancer and 570 families a year would no longer suffer the premature loss of a mother, wife, sister or daughter, often years before they needed to die.
• It will also not just prolong lives but mean a higher quality of life by reducing the impact of cancer.

Cumbria NHS trusts to merge

One of the reports presented at last week's meeting of Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee was a progress review on the merger of the two main trusts providing NHS care in North, West and East Cumbria.

The former organisations which are merging are

1) The North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust (NCUH),

which provides secondary care in the northern two-thirds of the county running West Cumberland Hospital (WCH) and the Cumberland Infirmary at Carlisle (CIC), and

2) The Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation NHS Trust (CPFT)

which is much less easily describe din a sentence but provides more than 60 community and mental health services over an area which currently covers the whole of Cumbria.

I personally think the advantages of the package which this merger comes with outweigh the disadvantages  -it makes for a simpler, less "balkanised" structure in which the resources of the NHS in the Northern two-thirds of the county can more effectively be concentrated on the issues which most need attention - but there are important questions to be asked and some of them were asked on Tuesday.

The most obvious issue is that the existing trusts do not cover identical areas and there is work to be done to make sure that the new arrangements are as satisfactory in the Barrow and South Lakes area of the county as they are in the North.

There are some concerns in this area and they were raised and discussed at the meeting.

This is taking place in the context that more partnership working with neighbouring trusts to provide Mental health services will be taking place and the North and South of Cumbria will be looking in different directions. This will need to be subject to careful scrutiny when more detailed proposals come forward,

The  report "This is us" which went to the committee can be found here.

The question of a name for the merged organisation has yet to be settled: if you have any constructive suggestions I gather the Trusts would be delighted to hear them!