|
|
 |
| |
Royal Free
stories do not help morale
• I am completely fed up with the New Journal running
scare stories about the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead. Such
stories do not help morale at the hospital.
How can you take the word of one patient and say morale is at
an all time low? In any huge institution like the Free, there
are successes as well as failures. when did the New Journal
last have a headline about the successes? Plenty of patients
write appreciative letters after they’ve had successful
treatment.
The hospital is at the forefront of many medical advances, and
patients come from all over the world for its specialist and
expert treatment.
Along with many friends and relatives, I have reason to thank
the Royal Free for successful operations and other treatments
over many years. I’ve had eight operations, as well as
blood tests and other routine investigations, such as endoscopy,
leading to successful interventions. As I get older, I expect
I’ll be visiting more often, and may even end my days there.
I am immensely grateful that it is there and the NHS looks after
us all, as medical care gets ever more complicated and expensive.
Please stop your obsessive campaign against its management and
non-clinical staff. They are all important in the teamwork that
is required to deliver modern medical care. I think the CNJ
is an excellent campaigning newspaper, but please lets have
a more balanced view of the NHS in general, and the Royal Free
in particular.
TH
NW5
• Your unnamed correspondent has missed an important
point (Not so rosy at the Free April 13).
The Friends of the Royal Free Hospital (a registered charity)
have been offered temporary use of the former flower shop premises
at a nominal rent and we will soon be opening Friends Gifts
– a branch of the Friends shop – in this space. Unlike
any other retailer our charitable status requires that all the
net profits be used for the benefit of patients.
The Friends’ Trustees ensure that this is achieved and
in 2005 the Friends shop provided over £75,000 towards
extra amenities and equipment for patients throughout the hospital.
Friends gifts will enable us to raise even more funds in the
coming year and we hope that patients, visitors and staff will
continue to support this important facility in their local hospital.
NICKY BEGENT
Chairman
Friends of The Royal Free Hospital
Pond Strett
NW3
• Your paper has rightly raised concerns about the cuts
in staffing and ward closures at the Royal Free Hospital in
recent weeks but your readers may not know why Camden Council
could not do more to intervene.
Since 2002, local councils have had the duty in law to scrutinise
local health services. But where a local hospital trust proposes
significant changes to the way they operate, any effective scrutiny
of the decision, before it is implemented, can only happen if
the local authorities of the areas affected work together through
a joint scrutiny committee.
This process was obviously the brainchild of a New Labour spin
doctor who wanted to give the impression that more powers were
being offered to local authorities.
However in practice, when the more controversial decisions need
to be challenged, it is incredibly difficult to do. In the case
of the Royal Free’s cuts, while Camden’s Overview
and Scrutiny Commission wanted to set up a joint scrutiny committee,
the Tories running Barnet scuppered the opportunity to do so,
thereby letting the Royal Free’s Trust Board get away with
it.
Why Barnet’s Tories did not believe that speeding up the
discharge of patients, after a wide range of operations, is
not a significant change in the service on offer, is beyond
me. Perhaps it is because detailed scrutiny for them is too
much like hard work.
The Lib Dems on Camden Council will do everything they can to
monitor the effect of the cuts on patients, but without a reform
of the scrutiny system by the New Labour government, and without
some serious commitment from the Tories to look after patients’
interests, it could be an uphill struggle.
Councillor JOHN BRYANT (Lib Dem)
Belsize Road
NW6
|
| |
|
|
|
