New hospitals anyone

Leicester Hospitals Trust have just been given £450 million. In the last few years we have had a new state of the art A&E and multistorey carpark. They are going to build a dedicated children's wing and a maternity hospital.
In Loughborough there is still a 24 hour urgent care centre and I am hoping this will stay open.

It's claptrap. Just like the words on the side of the bus were that promised to plough millions into our NHS that gullible folk fell for.

Well if the new hospital Liverpool is still building 2years after the finish date is anything to go by, I would ask whose pockets are being lined!! Corilian went bust. A closer look at their finances could have told anyone willing to listen it was going to happen. It's just money for the boys! Where has this money suddenly come from? The lies in the bus go round and round.

Most of it isn't new money. The CCG responsible for Princess Alexandra Trust has been selling off land and, no doubt, the land where the current hospital stands is worth millions. Some of the money has already been earmarked by government and the trust intends to raise the rest from investment (PFI Mark2?).

The tories have closed youth centres, sure start centres, police stations, fire stations, walk in centres, A and Es, tax offices, libraries, schools, - what has opened? 2,000 food banks. Great record.

MOnica excellent point!
I live in the North East and we have a new hospital which for anyone without a car is an absolute nightmare to attend/visit.

The ambulance service in my area have been told that anyone calling an ambulance must be taken to this hospital and it's resulted in people actually refusing to be taken in...
Yet we have 3 fantastic hospitals within a 10/15 minute journey - all easily accessible by public transport!
Some months ago when I was with a family member for an appointment, I was chatting to a lady whose husband had been admitted, her mobility wasn't great and to visit was costing her £20+ a day in a taxi(she has nobody who can take / collect her).

www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=2ahUKEwjSw5Plp_jkAhW1QxUIHZXNDNwQFjABegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-politics-24130684&usg=AOvVaw0lVRImgBmq7EpOc1hJpkNG

Wastage of £13 billion by Blair, plus £31 billion legal fees owed by Govt in relation to this , plus grossly expensive PFI initiative which taxpayers will be funding for decades yet. Thank you For wasting all this taxpayers NHS funds Mr Blair and Labour.

It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. Suddenly there is pots of money. Sajid Javid has promised the largest increase in public spending on the health service in ten years.

Who's been in power for the last nine years of the decade?

I for one won't look a gift horse in the mouth. If a new hospital is to be built surely some people will benefit. Oh I forgot. Boris has announced it, and many on Gransnet won't give Boris a chance.

You seem to have missed the point newnanny. The new hospital in my area was announced ages ago, but Johnson/Hancock have jumped on the bandwagon.

PS. I do think Johnson has had a fair few chances. He hoists himself with his own petard.

I don't have any hospitals within a 15/20 minute drive and I don't live in a very rural area. The one which is being rebuilt is 33 miles away and will have better transport links.

I had a heart attack two years ago and was taken to a hospital, where there was no public transport and is about 40 miles away. Admittedly, it's a world class centre for heart disease and I was treated well, but getting home was a nightmare. I don't have any close family or friends I could call on, but I was also told that transport couldn't be provided to take me home. I have no idea how much a taxi would have cost - it's money I would find very difficult to find. In the end, I discharged myself a day early (against medical advice) so that my daughter could travel 200 miles on a Sunday to take me home. Thank goodness that hospital has now been rebuilt (nothing to do with the Conservative government) in a more accessible location for public transport.

When I arrived home, I was told not to drive BUT there was no help available and even the GP (whom I was told to contact as soon as possible) wouldn't do a home visit and the first appointment I could get was five weeks later.

I wrote to my MP at the time because I was very upset and frightened, but I didn't even receive a reply. Now she's crowing about how much the government is putting into health because it's claiming responsibility for building a new hospital. Yep! I'm a tad annoyed.

As far as staffing - I can remember a friend of mine , who was a nurse tutor, saying that she had been to a training conference (this was in the late 80s) and was told that due to the drop in birth rate, that there would be a problem getting enough student nurses to replace the ones that were due to retire by the year 2,000.
This, along with the cuts in financial support for the NHS meant that either students didn't complete the course or couldn't get a job once they had qualified, The training was then changed to a degree course, including having to get student loans, instead of being paid while in training.
Hospitals then went out, trawling Europe and Asia for qualified staff. Many of whom have now returned home due to the uncertainty of Brexit.
Government keeps either quoting millions for the NHS or chucking money at it, with no certainty that the money will actually be used for either medical staffing or patient services. Most of it is wasted - local hospital spent thousands redecorating the ground floor of the hospital - wards on upper floors have virtually see through privacy curtains , staff often have to "borrow" bed linen, towels, pillows etc from other wards - when a CQC inspection was done when I was an in patient, the curtains were all pushed back and the spare pillow I was given was whisked away and taken back to another ward as soon as the inspectors had gone !
That is before CEOs resign because they are not up to standard and get huge pay offs for doing a bad job!
No point in giving the NHS millions unless a close watch is kept on how it is spent , and putting the current medical staff first.

I agree no point in new hospitals if there are not enough staff. I also saw analysis of what he actually meant by 40+new hospitals. That isn't quite what it will be. At least not for a very long time. We need more staff now not the possibility of new hospitals in 10 years time

I think you have a good point jaylucy. When I was recovering from my heart op, I was in a bay with three other ladies, but there was a bed missing. A lady was wheeled into the bay after a quadruple bypass op and had to stay on a trolley for hours before a patient in another part of the hospital was discharged. Even when a bed did turn up, it wasn't the usual hospital quality bed, but looked as though it had been bought from the bargain basement in IKEA.

I really wonder if hospital managers ever spend time on the wards, speaking to patients, to find out what's really going on.

It's the same with GP surgeries. Mine has a "good" rating and states that patients can get to see a doctor within two weeks on average - oh no, they can't. About 70% of appointments are taken up with people who queue up before 8am and demand a same day appointment. That's hopeless for anybody who works or has young children or wants a pre-booked appointment for a chronic illness or is worried about something, which could turn out to be very serious.

I don't think new staff will be needed for the "new" hospital which is going to be built in my area because existing staff will transfer - well, those of them who aren't EU citizens and have decided to return to their homeland.

NHS were advertising yesterday on the radio for nurses etc.

Lets not forgot that it was Philip Hammond who nurtured any 'money tree' his former colleagues may now have.

It already has a shortfall of thousands of staff, so I'm not surprised. Ads won't do much good, unless staff are treated better and training opportunities become more attractive.

I can’t see why a degree is necessary in the first instance. Before anyone shouts at me, initial training and SRN qualifications were a really good way of training and SENs could progress and move on to SRN. Additional specialist courses etc. would be an excellent way of progressing and developing skills and knowledge.

As with other professions, hoops have been developed the end result being that staff choose to leave and take up another career.

It’s about time our nursing staff are paid an excellent wage for the extremely stressful job they do

No one is saying new hospitals aren’t a good idea. I’m just a bit cynical as to the timing and the honesty of this announcement. Surprising it’s not on the side of a bus.

Just because Blair wasted money doesn’t make it ok for this lot to do the same. Some people think defending one flawed dishonest policy by criticising another makes it all ok.

For a Blair’s faults, he did put money into schools and initiatives like sure start.

I don't suppose the announcement that Harlow is to have a new hospital (already planned) is anything at all to do with the fact that the seat is a bellwether constituency.

Aprilrose, what a sad sign of the times, there is no wonder standards have dropped when people like your husband have to be overlooked for 'diversity rules' - that's shocking. You have my sympathies.

So now people are complaining that we are getting new hospitals and revamped ones... Seems that whatever the government does people complain. It was explained where the money was coming from and about getting more staff...