Thursday, October 4, 2012

"Is there a hidden agenda" over hospital closure?


* Closure-threatened Llangollen Cottage Hospital.  
Anti-supermarket and "save our hospital" campaigner Martin Crumpton has sent in the following letter on the subject of the closure-threatened Cottage Hospital: 
 
"On Tuesday, I attended two hospital appointments at Wrexham Maelor, both necessary but neither remarkable. Due to personal circumstances, I needed hospital transport both ways – yet another example of a public service patients cherish but the government underfunds.
In all, I spent nearly seven hours for two appointments.
Imagine what that would be like for routine physiotherapy, minor injuries, phlebotomy or any of the other services provided so conveniently by our Cottage Hospital.
Waiting patiently for the return leg of my journey, there was another patient waiting too – a lady in a wheelchair. She was headed for the Cottage Hospital, as an in-patient, occupying one of the tren beds we currently have in Llangollen.
Then it occurred to me: What IS the all-fired hurry to close the Cottage Hospital?
We’ve never had an explanation – satisfactory or otherwise – why they’re so determined to close it in 2013, barely six months away.
The more recent extensions, the Portakabin where the Physio department is, was rewired and redecorated in July this year. So what’s the problem?
Our hospital has been operating since 1837 and, despite being starved of resources, is as functional today as it has been for the last several years. S
o why close it prematurely, before it replacement is up and running?
It is a fact, obtained by a Freedom of Information request, that a bed in our Cottage Hospital costs just over £400pw compared to over £900pw at Wrexham Maelor.
There’s something Betsi Cadwaladr isn‘t telling us.
We need to find out exactly why they’re so dead-set on closing our hospital when they could so easily, and cost-effectively, keep it open until its replacement is operating.
The only reasonable conclusion is there’s a hidden agenda."
 
Martin Crumpton

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