News

Kettering General Hospital’s bid for an Urgent Care Hub for North Northamptonshire has been cited as a prime example in a national campaign fighting for more capital investment for the NHS.

On August 30 the national organisation that represents hospital Trusts – NHS Providers – launched a campaign calling on the Government to address the challenge of NHS funding.

A survey done by the organisation shows that 97% of hospital Trusts in the country are worried about having enough capital to invest in their organisations and 94% are concerned this could affect patient care.

KGH is one of the campaign’s cases studies because of concerns that if North Northamptonshire does not attract significant capital investment urgent care patients could be at risk.

Kettering General Hospital’s Chief Operating Officer, Jo Fawcus, is in charge of running the hospital’s services and can see the stress they are under on a daily basis.

She said: “Population growth in Northamptonshire has been 30% over the last 30 years – significantly higher than the national average of 16%.

“When our A&E department opened in 1993 it was designed to see about 40,000 patients per year – that’s just over 100 per day.

“Now we see 90,000 patients per year – which is often more than 300 patients per day.

“Local people are aware of this population growth – they can see the huge housing estates growing around all our major towns, and have often experienced of the stress this is putting on local healthcare from getting GP appointments to being seen in hospital.

“Our A&E facilities have been stretched as far as they can be. Store cupboards and offices have been converted into clinical bays and there is no space left in our existing footprint.

“That is why this Trust – fully supported by our local health and social care partners – has been seeking funding for a £50m Urgent Care Hub for the KGH site.

“This would re-provide our A&E department in a high quality way able to meet these growing demands.

“In addition the facility would be a true hub – providing GP and mental health care facilities to ensure that patients who need urgent care, or whatever kind, can have a safe place to go to for that care when they need it.”

Local growth estimates suggest that KGH’s A&E department will soon be seeing at least 10,000 more patients over the next five years – with the county’s population of over 80-year-olds increasing by 21% over the same period.

Key stresses within the department include:

• Staff not having clear lines of sight on some of the most unwell patients, to ensure they are monitoring their conditions appropriately.
• Privacy and dignity for patients not able to be maintained due to overcrowding and cramped spaces
• Patients are waiting longer than the national limits, as there is physically not enough space to treat the volumes coming in the door.
• Children having to wait openly in corridors and go through adult areas to receive treatment
• A lack of space to offload ambulances often results in long queues, inhibiting ambulances response times to 999 calls.

  Kettering General Hospital’s Chief of Division for Medicine, Dr Kish Patel, said: “The stresses on our A&E department are very real and we are very concerned that if demand continues to rise our patients could be at risk.

  “We go to great lengths to provide a safe service and succeed despite the current conditions our teams are working in.

  “But we just cannot continue to see more and more people in our current facilities without impacting on safety. The Urgent Care Hub plan is a very logical way of providing the urgent care services that the people of North Northamptonshire deserve.

  “It has the support of all of our partners and of our local community and their representatives.

  “We very much hope that this national campaign does result in investment to support NHS care – particularly in areas such as ours which are undergoing such significant growth.”

  The Urgent Care Hub at Kettering was rated the highest clinical priority for capital funding by all health and social care partners in the county, and supported by NHSI/E regionally. Despite this it was unsuccessful at winning any capital funds in recent capital funding announcements.

  There now remains no clear direction for bidding for any further central capital funds, nor any approved routes by the government of securing private finance.