Biggleswade residents often mention to me that poor access to healthcare is a major, growing, issue in the town. CBC acknowledge this saying ‘Currently the provision of health and social care across central beds is fragmented, of variable quality, uneven access to good care and the supporting range of health and social care options available to people’. CBC recognise that if they fail to ‘reconfigure health and care services in anticipation of demand it will put a significant pressure on already vulnerable hospital services and fundamentally undermine the quality of care provision’. So what’s their plan?
The population of central Bedfordshire is currently 278,900 but CBC predict it will rise to at least 282,000 by 2021 with an increase of almost 53% in the over 65’s. CBC sees its role as a ‘space shaper’ to influence how health and care services are delivered and the plan is to develop multidisciplinary, health and care hubs to deliver more joined up service.
So what does this actually mean for Biggleswade? The current Biggleswade Hospital site is proposed as the site of the ‘Ivel Valley Hub’ where healthcare such as diagnostics, day procedures, access to therapists and geriatricians as well as co-location of social care services including community and voluntary services is planned. Bringing these services together at one site will make them more efficient and allow them to work together more easily which will mean better healthcare for residents.
Will it make any difference? Providing healthcare via a multidisciplinary team has been used across the NHS for many years and certainly improves the patient experience. It should be more efficient so as a result capacity should increase. However, CBC may see this as an opportunity to make cost savings and ‘rationalise’ services which I would strongly oppose if I were elected as councillor.
When will this happen? As has been widely publicised the timescale has slipped for this plan, largely due to discussions about the site and how appropriate it is for housing the proposed hub. Although CBC are suggesting a very optimistic timescale (work completed by the end of 2021) it is still far from clear exactly what services will relocate to the new site and this will undoubtedly lead to further delays. However, Biggleswade and the Ivel Valley Hub has been the test bed for developing the multi-disciplinary approach so when the infrastructure is in place Biggleswade should be in an ideal position to move forward quickly.
Given we’re heading into election period with CBC’s election on 2nd May, the following details are known as an election ‘imprint’ and are added to ensure people realise I am a candidate and all is transparent:
Promoted by Hayley Whitaker, 3 Sutton Road, Eyeworth, SG19 2TP.
One Comment
Arthur
The aim should be for healthcare to be entirely independent of the political executive in the same way as the law. I also believe that GPs should be directly employed by the NHS instead of being private business. If GPs wish to be business people then they should go into private practice properly and succeed or fail based on their own ability – not a captive market.
I mention these two points as we see many decisions are apparently made for business or political reasons rather than actual healthcare needs.
No facility should be located where it cannot be easily reached by public transport except for if a free (and frequent) shuttle service is offered. Currently there is a vacant five storey office building with parking to let next to Biggleswade station.
However, far greater use should be made of technology – if private providers are offering GP consultations via Skype at £20 (from which they must presumably make a profit) then why are they not available free of charge on the NHS ? I appreciate that Skype is not suitable for every situation or patient but why is the NHS still the world’s largest user of fax machines – it really does need a good, hard, kick up the eighties !