A NORTH-EAST MP has fired a fierce broadside against health bosses who want to downgrade her local hospital.

Helen Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, has condemned plans to strip the town’s hospital of acute medical services.

In her formal response to the plans, Mrs Goodman said doctors and GPs in the Bishop Auckland area “have stressed to me the importance of keeping all six acute wards open”.

County Durham and Darlington Foundation NHS Trust insist that the only way to ensure safe patient services in the future is to concentrate acute medical services at Darlington Memorial Hospital and Bishop Auckland General Hospital.

The MP said it was “absolutely vital that patients needing emergency care are able to see doctors at Bishop Auckland General Hospital of the day or night”.

That means that doctors and anaesthetists “must be on duty at Bishop Auckland hospital 24 hours a day, seven days a week and that patients requiring emergency care should not be seen by triage nurses”. Under the proposals, there will be no out-of-hours anaesthetist present to resuscitate a mother in labour “nor any paediatrician present or on call if a baby is born with unexpected problems” said the MP.

She said people were “rightly worried” about having to travel to Darlington or Durham for emergency care and concerned that their local hospital “may no longer offer the kind of services they want and expect from the NHS”.

The MP said many constituents felt that they “are not being listened to” by the local health authorities and claimed that the consultation process has been “deeply flawed”.

Given her experience of the consultation process over the past year, Mrs Goodman said: “I entirely share this concern.”

The MP said she was “unconvinced”

that the hospital trust has adequately made the case to support the proposals.

She claimed that requests for “important information”

made to all the local health authorities had not resulted in “any substantive reply”.

Mrs Goodman pointed out that the proposals involved moving acute medical services away from Wear Valley, the most deprived local authority in England, to relatively affluent and healthy parts of the region.

The MP also challenged claims that patients from the Bishop Auckland area would be able to get to Darlington and Durham hospitals in an hour.

MP's thoughts

● Proposals will lead to nearly a 50 per cent reduction in beds at Bishop Auckland hospital.

● Concern that patients from Darlington and Durham hospitals will be sent to Bishop Auckland for rehabilitation before their condition is fully stable.

● Many rehabilitation patients will be elderly so round-the-clock care, including anaesthetists and resuscitation facilities should be available.

● Stroke department should remain at Bishop Auckland as the local population has the highest incidence of stroke in the area.

● The loss of paediatrics is not justified because Bishop Auckland has 13,000 annual admissions, just short of the trust’s viability target of 15,000.

● Withdrawing anaesthetics from Bishop Auckland from April is “premature”.

● The trust should consider opening new services including alcohol detoxification, weight reduction surgery and a cardiac investigation unit.