The NHS faces an uncertain and challenging future as the government’s reform legislation takes control but there is still positive news locally for users of Marlborough’s own Savernake Hospital.
That was the message from Bruce Laurie, chairman of the Great Western Hospital Foundation Trust, at the annual meeting of the Friends of Savernake Hospital’s annual meeting in Marlborough town hall on Wednesday.
“If anybody tells you they know exactly how it is all going to work out after nearly 1,000 amendments to the legislation then they are lying,” Mr Laurie confessed.
“But we start with considerable goodwill from general practice. We start with Wiltshire Council wanting to embrace the strategic part of the role they are given in the Act and we certainly want to be practical players in this new environment.”
And he insisted: “It’s definitely not privatisation. But it is going to lead to much more uncertainty from some of the competition. Some of that is welcome, some is not.”
One vital factor was of course funding. Great Western faced the prospect of £16 milllion cuts to its fixed £260 million turnover.
“That is the reality of a fixed budget, the rising age of patients and the increasing cost of treatment,” Mr Laurie pointed out. “So the board is being severely challenged in achieving that. We have driven efficiency in the way we do things as far as we can.”
“What we are going to have to do now to learn how to do things differently, be more adventurous. A good hospital has to be both efficient and effective. That is our aim if we are to stay viable – and we are determined to do so.”
But for those who lived in rural Wiltshire there was the major development of new services, some possibly mobile in the future, as the emphasis of the NHS changed direction to care in the home and care in the community.
Mr Laurie assured the audience, which included Marlborough’s new mayor, Councillor Edwina Fogg, that he was a total supporter of community hospitals such as Savernake, having built one himself while in charge of the PCT in Newbury, where it had taken 30 years to achieve success.
And he paid tribute to the work and far-sighted thinking of the Friends in their work supporting Savernake. “We are delighted to be closely associated,” he told supporters.
The exciting prospect ahead was that while most people didn’t know the difference between hospital and social care it was vital now that Great Western was teaming up with Wiltshire Council’s care services in ways to keep people out of expensive hospitals, help them with integrated services and reduce their council tax demand too.
“We have agreed to work on some pilot schemes in the Marlborough area to explore what the realities really are,” he revealed. “I think it all comes down to working in a way that joins up all those services.”
“We are trying to ensure that the district nurses, the health visitors and the physios, occupational therapists and the community matrons that work from the Savernake base to the right support from specialist consultants when the situation gets beyond what general practice can normally handle.”
“It is no accident that in recent months we have seen an increasing use of beds at Savernake, the 20 beds now increased to about 30, and we plan to add more beds.”
“We see your hospital as a basis for diagnostics, as a base for integrated nursing teams, fundamentally the nursing teams we can all upon wit their own dedicated support. And that mean we can give a rapid service.”
“That is quite distinctive, something we see as the bedrock as we work much more closely with social care. Similarly, the use of the clinics has grown steadily over the year and, in total, we are talking about nearly 100,000 attendances.”
And with the use of the latest technology there was the prospect of mobile services — just like the AA — treating people directly in their homes. “That is our desire,” declared Mr Lawrie.
