‘We simply cannot staff the rotas’, A&E closure hospital bosses explain

Hospital bosses have come under fire for closing an accident and emergency department to protect patient safety.

The A&E department at Chorley Hospital in Lancashire will close temporarily from Monday because there are not enough doctors to man the service, trust bosses said.

But Lindsay Hoyle, the local MP, blamed management failure and said he had suggested even calling in military medics to see the department through its staffing crisis.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said they did not have enough doctors to staff rotas after April 18 and “there are no other safe options for delivering care”.

The A&E will be temporarily replaced with an “urgent care service” and the “vast majority” of patients who normally attend A&E will be treated appropriately under the new arrangement, the trust said.

The new service will be open between 8am and 8pm.

From Monday, 999 ambulances will take patients to the Royal Preston Hospital or other nearest appropriate hospitals rather than Chorley.

The trust said it had become increasingly difficult to staff the middle grade doctor rota at its emergency departments due to a combination of a national shortage of emergency medicine doctors, not enough doctors in training who help staff rotas and the application of the national agency cap.

And despite a number of measures the trust said, including recruitment and changing how the service was organised, it had not been able to secure the additional locum doctors needed.

The trust currently has eight of the 14 doctors needed to staff the middle grade rotas, covering just over 200 hours of the 457 hours on the middle grade rota a week.

But Mr Hoyle said the Trust’s management had failed to respond to a growing problem.

He said: “The plans to close A&E at Chorley are a reflection of poor planning, a failure to recruit and a continual trend of services being shifted from Chorley to Preston.

“This is not a response to an unforeseen crisis but looks much like a planned move.

“The Trust quote patient safety as the reason for closure. How can you prioritise patient safety by closing an A&E department, forcing people to travel an extra half hour to Preston and place an additional 50,000 people on an already overcrowded A&E department at Preston. This is absolute nonsense.”

Mr Hoyle said last week he had suggested help from military medics when he became aware of the threat of closure – but the trust had failed to make the request.

Professor Mark Pugh, consultant anaesthetist and medical director of the trust said: “We simply cannot staff the rotas, and it is an unacceptable risk to patient safety to attempt to provide an emergency department service with no doctors available to see people.

“These measures are temporary, and we will continue to do everything possible to secure all the staff we need and reinstate the emergency department service at Chorley.”

Mr Hoyle said the hospital management should “consider their position” and he is seeking an urgent meeting with the Health Secretary.

Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Dave Thompson / PA Wire.