Sussex - expendable voters

The expendable voters of Sussex are still under threat. the Primary Care Trust (a misnomer if ever there was one) are still trying to downgrade or close all but one of the remaining major hospitals in West Sussex.

At the same time the government want a further 58,000 houses built in the area... and don't want the roads upgraded.

and quoting directly from Keep Worthing and Southlands Hospitals

• The local healthcare economy is increasingly being penalised as a result of the South East’s growing, and relatively elderly, population
• More than 25 per cent of the population served by the Royal West Sussex NHS Trust is over 65. This is forecast to rise by 19 per cent over the next 10 years (St Richard’s Annual Report, Winter 2005)
• 4 per cent of those living in the Royal West Sussex Trust’s catchment area are over 85, compared to the national average of 2 per cent (St Richard’s Annual Report, Winter 2005)
• As the Government attempts to reduce regional health inequalities, there are growing funding disparities between the North of England and the South East
• The Government spends £1,250 per head on patients in the South and £1,450 per head in the North (Alice Miles, The Times, 15 July 2006)
• In respect of deficits, the Chief Executive’s Report to the NHS of June 2006 states that “the biggest financial problems are concentrated in the South and East of England” (Chief Executive’s Report to the NHS, June 2006)
• The deficits recorded in the South East and East of England accounted for 58 per cent (£361 million) of the NHS’s gross deficit (£625 million) in 2005-06 (Chief Executive’s Report to the NHS, June 2006)
• The deficit recorded by the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority, which came into being on 1 July 2006 and stretches from Dover in the East to Chichester in the West, and serves a population of nearly 4.2 million, accounted for 15 per cent of the NHS’s gross deficit in 2005-06 alone.
• The Royal West Sussex NHS Trust has also highlighted other funding problems as a cause for concern in the local health economy
• In 2004-05, local pricing in West Sussex achieved only 80 per cent of the national tariff. For hospital treatment that would cost £2,000 nationally, the local price was £1,600. This has led to a substantial financial shortfall (St Richard’s Annual Report, Winter 2005).

As one of our local MPs asked the blessed Tony:

Is the Prime Minister aware that consultants at Worthing hospital, which is threatened with downgrading because it is in a Conservative area, have been told that they must not see their patients before eight weeks, even if their patients’ conditions deteriorate? Those consultants believe that it is unethical for them not to continue to see their patients and they do not want to spend their time sitting around twiddling their stethoscopes, even if it means that the hospital does not get paid. Who is acting in the best interests of those patients—the consultants or the failed accountants at the strategic health authority sorting out the financial mess in the NHS?

This is probably to teach us all a lesson for not voting Labour.