Community Hospitals

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. The Minister and I have spent a bit of time together in Westminster Hall in the past couple of days, and it is nice to see him in his place. I wish him well. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing this debate, which gives us all an opportunity to participate, and we thank him for that.

I have a deep interest in community hospitals and I therefore look forward to making a contribution. As the Democratic Unionist party spokesperson for health, the issue is of some interest to me. It is not often that we are the second largest party in the Chamber. [Laughter.] With my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and me, we have two Members, which makes us the second largest party. It is a pleasure to speak on this issue. The local hospital in my constituency of Strangford is in Newtownards. It is a community hospital, like Bangor and Downe, which are in neighbouring constituencies, and all those hospitals feed into the major hub of our hospitals, which is the Ulster hospital. I put on record, because I have to, the excellent staff we have at those hospitals. We are very much indebted to their work, the commitment they give beyond their hours and the quality of their experience.

Community hospitals have a big role to play in our society. Without them, the NHS health system would be under even greater pressure. We have one of the best, if not the best health system in the world, but being the best comes with pressures. Due to the nature of our health system, which entitles all UK residents to health care, delays and backlogs can, unfortunately, arise sometimes. In January this year, the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast was forced to declare a major incident due to the large number of patients visiting accident and emergency. Health is a devolved matter, and although our Health Minister at home, Edwin Poots, dealt with the issue extremely well, I am under no illusion that the Belfast hospital was alone in declaring itself under extreme pressure. The nature of the NHS means that that happens sometimes, but community hospitals can come in to address that.

I am always thoroughly impressed by the work of staff in A and E departments, because they are often run off their feet, with many people coming in with a variety of problems, but community hospitals play an important role in easing their work. Often, people have injuries that need to be seen to that are not emergencies, and sometimes people have to look at how best to categorise those issues and which hospital to attend. Some people could see their GP at their local community hospital and use the out-of-hours service, rather than attending A and E departments. That is not meant as a criticism; I am always conscious that people respond in the way they see best, but sometimes we need to take a longer look at how things work. Community hospitals can play a greater role.

One thing that we need to do is raise awareness of community hospitals through this debate and look at how best the community and our constituents can respond. The role of community hospitals is to provide accessible health care and ancillary services to meet the needs of defined local populations, particularly in areas remote from district general hospitals. As an extension of primary care, they enable GPs and the primary health care teams to support patients within their own communities. Rehabilitation is a major role of community hospitals, and many offer a wide range of health promotion, diagnostic, emergency, acute and convalescent services, as well as out-of-hours treatment.

Community hospitals provide an undervalued resource, and those wishing to close such hospitals or downgrade them to no longer being community hospitals have often presented community support as irrational, but it is not irrational in my area. The community hospital in my constituency looks after the Ards peninsula. Travel from Portaferry, Portavogie or Kircubbin to the Ards hospital takes 15 to 20 minutes, but travel to the Ulster hospital would take twice as long, because of the traffic. The community hospital has a significant and important role to play, and we must look outside this place, to see what the issues are for my constituents. In the community hospital, they feel like they are treated as people, rather than numbers. That is not a criticism, but it is a reality.

Figures for Northern Ireland show that the waiting times at A and E are extremely good with just 294 out of 62,193 people waiting longer than 12 hours to be treated or discharged. That figure of 294 must also be addressed, but the numbers show the importance of the role that community hospitals play in treating non-emergency injuries, as well as the large-scale rehabilitation programmes that they offer. Community hospitals provide more convenient services, are less costly for the local population to access and are tailored to the local community’s needs. The hon. Member for Dover referred in his contribution to the significant and important role that community hospitals play in that respect. Furthermore, community hospitals provide a range of safe and appropriate services, often with considerable cost benefit to the NHS—minor injuries units being a prime example.

Doctors can be summoned very rapidly to community hospitals, virtually all of which operate without resident medical staff in a satisfactory way. They have proved that they can do the job to a certain level, which is impressive and eliminates the argument that community hospitals do not provide enough of a service, forcing people to district general hospitals when injured or ill through the night. It is a fact of life that such things happen, but that does not downgrade the importance of the community hospital. It would be good, however, to see all community hospitals offering night-time services. In community hospitals, the patient is under the care of their own GP, who will continue to look after them on discharge. The community nursing teams are also able to retain closer links with the patient at community hospitals, which is vitally important for rehabilitation and is why community hospitals are so successful when it comes to patient recuperation

In conclusion—I am conscious that several other Members want to speak—the benefits of having the same doctors and nurses, who know a patient’s case and can get to know the patient, cannot be underestimated. That is why this debate is so important. I encourage the Minister to raise awareness of community hospitals’ work and to encourage people with minor injuries to use their local community hospital instead of A and E departments at district general hospitals. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover on bringing forward this debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to hearing from the third party in the room today when the shadow Minister makes his comments.