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Destruction of St Helier hospital makes no sense (From Sutton Guardian)
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Letter to the Editor: Destruction of St Helier hospital makes no sense
7:50am Thursday 12th July 2012 in Save St Helier
St Helier's A&E and maternity units are under threat of closure
By Michael Barltrop, via email
With regard to your articles concerning the proposed closure of accident and emergency and maternity at St Helier Hospital.
I can speak with some knowledge of how evil that project is since St Helier saved the life of my partner.
Not once but three times and were able to reverse an otherwise terminal condition.
No other hospital in the area could have achieved what they did, since its emergence as a professional recognised centre of excellence.
I lived at the hospital for two months so, therefore, have first-hand experience of the miracles performed by St Helier medical and administration staff every day and night.
The destruction of that hospital’s established lifesaving units and the blind transfer of those responsibilities to an already swamped and near bankrupt St George’s is an act of criminal irresponsibility in my opinion and must inevitably lead to the avoidable deaths of many hundreds of people, sacrified on the altar of political dogma.
For example, it takes between five to 10 minutes for ambulances (based in Carshalton, close to the Bupa nursing home in Mitcham) to transfer emergency patients from Mitcham and Morden to St Helier.
But it takes between 10 and 30 minutes to take those same patients to St George’s via the infinite traffic gridlock of Tooting.
The average waiting times in A&E at St Helier are between zero and three seconds for critical emergencies. The longest we spent in A&E at St George’s was two hours. On a Wednesday night, things are much more lethal on Saturday nights.
It makes no sense to replace an NHS organisation that remains corruption-free with an imported American model that is incapable of being anything else except totally corrupt.
A small number of doctors will indeed become extremely rich under these Cameron/Clegg proposals, but a lot of blood will pay for that. It will also bankrupt St George’s.
And let us not forget that the majority of lives lost as a result of the progressive destruction of St Helier will be women and children – the other name for wives and daughters.
Make sure your voice is heard by sending your letter to: letters@wimbledonguardian.co.uk
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RichardHarding says...
8:52am Thu 2 Aug 12
You may think that the proposals made by the Better Services Better Value report are misguided, but they are most certainly not "evil". People intent on pure evil tend not to publish several reports investigating the facts, hold over 100 public meetings and subject their proposals to a three month public consultation.
The problem here is that the BSBV team have objectively assessed the evidence and come up with the most realistic proposals.
You have made a series of unevidenced assertions with no grounding in scientific evidence.
Your most ridiculous example (aside from simply making up ambulance times) is to suggest that somehow St Helier sees every A+E patients in seconds. Of course critical patients are seen immediately - this is the case at all NHS hospitals, including St Georges. Your single experience of waiting for two hours is not, by any means, sufficient evidence to assume that all waiting times are that long.
Finally, who are these doctor's who will get rich? Please explain your logic behind this.
By all means critically engage with the proposals, perhaps present some new evidence even. However, it is useless and counterproductive for you to sent semi-literate rants to the local newspaper containing little more than a series of things you "reckon" based on your limited experience.