A RADICAL shake-up of Stafford Hospital could see the county town lose its intensive care unit, maternity services and accident and emergency unit. The current site could be bulldozed and the hospital moved.
Healthcare regulator Monitor announced the proposals, which would see a fifth of patients treated elsewhere, after experts employed by the watchdog deemed Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust “clinically and financially unsustainable in its current form”.
Members of that team laid out the proposals at a press conference on Tuesday and will now hand them to a trust special administrator set to be appointed by the end of March.
Stafford’s MP Jeremy Lefroy, said: “They are trying to rip the heart out of Stafford Hospital. I have made it quite clear that any solution that means Stafford Hospital is no longer an acute hospital is not acceptable.”
Meanwhile former ambulance chief Roger Thayne is calling for the hospital to be handed back to the people to run.
“We really need a call to the people of Stafford. Do we have to put up with this? Are we going to sit back and let them take our hospital away?”
Cheryl Porter, of Support Stafford Hospital said: “It’s our last chance to make a stand.”
She was among 40 mums who gathered outside the hospital yesterday to campaign for the retention of full maternity services.
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