Whittington Hospital: tough choices to be made, says health boss

nlnews@archant.co.uk
03 April 2010

IF THE Whittington Hospital's accident and emergency department does not close, other harsh cuts will have to be made, a top health chief has admitted.

Rachel Tyndall, the NHS boss behind plans to scale down The Whittington, said there are a "range of relatively unpalatable choices that have to be made".

The North Central London NHS is planning to downgrade The Whittington as part of a mass reorganisation of the six hospitals that serve Islington, Camden, Haringey, Enfield and Barnet.

And it has drawn up three options for the hospital in Magdala Avenue, Archway - one with no A&E at all, one with a 16-hour A&E but no emergency surgery, and one with a 24-hour A&E but no cardiac, stroke or trauma services.

There has been mass opposition to the plans, with every consultant at The Whittington speaking out against them and several thousand patients and residents marching in protest.

But Ms Tyndall, chief executive of the North Central London NHS, told Islington Council's health and wellbeing review committee that if the A&E was saved, there would have to be other "trade-offs".

She said: "We have a responsibility in law to make sure that local people can receive high quality services for the amount of money within the NHS.

"There will be a range of relatively unpalatable choices that have to be made.

"We are going to have less money in the future not more."

Ms Tyndall admitted that if The Whittington's A&E department closes, other services would also go - because it would be too dangerous to have them on site without emergency doctors to hand. For example, The Whittington would no longer be able to have a full maternity ward. It would only be able to have a pared-down ward in which midwives would take care of simple births. Any women who then developed problems while in labour would have to be transferred to another hospital.