The Stop the Downgrade Campaign

Working to reinstate St. John's Hospital Livingston as an Acute Emergency Hospital

St. John's, the heartbeat of West Lothian

Contact us on our confidential hotline - Use this to tell us of ANY threats to hospital services - ANONYMITY GUARANTEED  
Use this button to confidentially let us know of any Service threat activities at St. John's

 



Next Public meeting on Thursday 26th January 2012 at 7.30pm in the Kaim Park Hotel, Bathgate

 
Send us your comments for our letters page
 
St. John's Hospital Stakeholder Group - Meeting minutes
   
What you can do to help the Campaign
   
E-mail us - get on our distribution list for newsletters and updates
   
   
   
   
   

A tribute to Ernie Walker

 

Public meeting 26th January 2012 Agenda

Dear supporter,
as serious issues and inequalities regarding local healthcare in the Lothians continue to emerge it is essential that these are raised to the public domain and efforts made to address them. Although significant achievements have been made to date we must continue to highlight these issues and work to resolve them to achieve fair and effective local healthcare.

You are invited to attend the public meeting on 26th January at the Kaim Park Hotel in Bathgate 7.30pm to participate, make inputs, ask questions get updates on the latest progress and hear from invited speakers.

Please try to come along, public support is the key to our success and we look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

Thank you,

The SDC Team

West Lothian Stop the Downgrade Campaign.

The Campaign Dedicated to STOP the Removal of Services from St. John’s Hospital at Howden, and to Restore St. John’s to a fully-functioning Acute Emergency Hospital.

Public Meeting 26th. January 2012

Kaim Park Hotel, Bathgate 7.30pm.

AGENDA.

1) Welcome by the Chair

2) St. John’s Hospital Stakeholders Group
And Councillor’s Update

3) Healthcare Policy in Lothians

4) Questions from the floor

5) Closing remarks and thanks from the Chair


17th January 2012 - SDC January 2012 newsletter

Contents

* Sturgeon slams NHS chiefs over English surgery offer

* NHS director's massive salary reward for constant attrition of services

* Consultant recruitement stalled as St. John's is seen as liable to become a 'geriatric hospital'

* Potentially serious conflict of interest re NHS Consultants and private hospital work

* St John's staff austerity sacrifices as NHS executives enjoy huge salaries and run up deficit

* More services at St. John's including the Childrens' ward potentially vulnerable

*

Read the SDC January 2012 newsletter here


14th January 2012

Sturgeon slams NHS chiefs over English surgery offer

We would like to thank the three SDC members who highlighted the plight of friends and family who were offered surgical operations down south. They chose to stay loyal to their local hospital and refused. What they didn't know was that in doing so, it gave NHS Lothian the chance to take them off the waiting times statistics to make their performance look better than it acutally was. We've been saying it for years: you can't trust NHS Lothian with facts and figures!
 
The article can be found below. Although the story quotes Labour MSPs, let's not lose sight of the the fact that it was the SDC membership who raised this with Action to Save St. John's Hospital Councillors Gordon Beurskens and Ellen Glass. They took this up through the Stakeholders Group, and after giving the story to the Sunday Times, the issue gained momentum.
 
We have them to thank for the interevention of the First Minister and Cabinet Secretary. If it had been left to our MSPs, it probably wouldn't have seen the light of day. But worse still, Ellen and Gordon got no credit for the work they've done, and the Labour Party has yet again stolen credit for their work. Well, we are grateful for what they do. And long may it continue.
 
The Council elections are only a few weeks away. We cannot afford to forget all that they have achieved on our behalf. Your votes will count now more than ever. If we hadn't had the influence the Action to Save St. John's Party have since 2007, who knows where we would have been. Rest assured, the bigger parties wouldn't have been paying as close attention to detail as they have.
 
Read the story here, and watch out for our newsletter to be released this week!

NHS bosses have been rapped by the Health Secretary for offering surgery in England to patients from the Lothians – then removing them from waiting list targets when they declined..

Read the full Evening News article here


28th November 2011

Dismay as watchdogs see doctors treating patients

Members of the NHS Lothian Board said they feared the inspections could intrude on patient privacy and lead to wide-ranging conclusions being drawn from a small number of observations. They have also queried the level of training of the inspectors..

Read the Evening News article here

 

English treatment is off table for patients

PATIENTS from the Lothians are no longer being offered the option of treatment in England to avoid lengthy waits. The halt on treatment south of the Border was introduced after NHS Lothian chief executive James Barbour announced he had launched a probe ...

Read the Scotsman article here

 


25th October 2011

NHS LOTHIAN ADMITS “MASSAGING” WAITING TIMES!!!

NHS Lothian Board has been “massaging” waiting times figures to mislead the Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, and the public.

The conduct of the Board is disgraceful.

The SDC calls upon the Health Secretary to conduct an enquiry into NHS Lothian’s practice of offering patients, often from West Lothian, operations in Northumberland and Harrogate. When these patients refuse, they are then withdrawn from the waiting times guarantee!

Read more here

Read the Scotsman article here


You read it here first.........

Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh unannounced inspection report
 
For years we have been saying that the RIE was a mess! Now the evidence proves it. The national media have now caught up with us after publication yesterday of the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate following their visit to the RIE in August.
 
But you didn't need the nationals to tell you: we published it last week on this site, and we highlighted that the Board failed to publish its own monitoring statistics for August. Was that because they knew what was coming in the report? Of course it was! Now the question has to be asked whether their own monitoring figures, that contrast starkly with the report findings, are reliable. Their answers will be interesting!
 
Not only does the report highlight the failures in general standards of cleanliness, it catalogues a list of failures including inappropriate handling of dirty linen; toilets not being used increasing the risk of Legionnaire's disease; equipment not fit for purpose; dangerous handling of sharps (needles etc); hand washing and decontamination procedures not being followed, to name but a few.
 
We don't blame hard pressed nursing staff for these failures. The fault clearly lies at the door of NHS Lothian. Their own monitoring has quite obviously failed. And while they continue to cut the numbers of frontline staff, we fear that this will be the thin edge of the wedge. They pay monstrous fees to the PFI contract that provides a get-rich-quick scheme for shareholders underwritten by the taxpayer, who in turn pay domestic staff a pittance to maximise their profits.

Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh unannounced inspection report Sept 2011 (PDF, 492K)

Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh unannounced inspection action plan Sept 2011 (PDF, 1030K)

 


September 26th 2011

PEOPLE with broken bones could be forced to wait 12 hours before seeing a doctor.

Read the Express article here


September 26th 2011

Care warning as nursing staff hit 'breaking point'...

Read the Herald Scotland article here


Newsletter September 2011

CHILDREN’S WARD SHOCKER !!

Informed sources have told the SDC that the Health Board plan to downgrade the children’s ward at St John’s! This is part of the plan to pour almost one BILLION pounds into the new Sick Kids hospital which the Board want to build right beside the Royal Infirmary at Little France. The reason is simple. The Board needs hard cash to pay the anticipated cost of £30 million every year for 30 years to the company which will build the new hospital. This money can only come from savings and one of the obvious targets is the existing children’s ward at St John’s...

Read the full September 2011 newsletter here

 



THE STOP THE DOWNGRADE CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

The primary aim of our Campaign is an immediate stop to the transfer of services to Edinburgh. It is our belief that Lothian is served best by TWO acute, emergency hospitals – St. John’s and Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.It is essential that services in both hospitals are made safe and sustainable. This is clinically and ethically appropriate. It will allow also the overwhelming majority of Lothian’s population to enjoy high quality emergency services close to their homes. On the St John’s site this will require a considerable enhancement of the existing catchment area from 170000 to at least 250000.
 
Moreover, St John’s will need to provide a mix of local and regional services. The latter should include a component of emergency general surgery. This in turn will provide support for Intensive Care, Accident and Emergency and the Medical Unit.Thanks to the dedication and hard work from our friends in the Action to Save St John’s Hospital Party (www.atssjh.org.uk), we have been successful in retaining existing services at St. John’s, facilitating millions of pounds of investment in the hospital and removing parking charges totally for the patients, visitors and staff.
 
Through public activism we have helped create a stakeholder group whereby the public in West Lothian can influence change at St. John’s through Council representatives. We intend to build on St John’s existing strengths while providing relief to Edinburgh’s hard-pressed Royal Infirmary. Edinburgh Royal Infirmary cannot cope with its workload and it fails continually to admit its patients promptly.
 
Repatriation of services away from Edinburgh back to St. John’s coupled with rezoning will help it provide more equitable health care in Lothian and support Edinburgh’s failing Royal Infirmary. As services return to St John’s it is inevitable that the infrastructure will need to be built up. In this way, we would hope to see the return of specialised laboratory services such as Pathology, and the Mortuary.
 

Be patient! Progress will be slow. However, what matters is the destination! We are working towards re-establishing St John’s as a fully-fledged, fully-staffed emergency general hospital which will evolve to meet the long-term needs of the rapidly expanding local population as well as making a significant contribution to the totality of health care across the whole of Lothian.

 

 
The Stop the Downgrade Campaign Aims and Objectives
 
How to complain to NHS Lothian - complaints made easy
 
Downgraded or not? here are the facts about the services which have been removed from St. John's and the supposed 'new' services added
 
What does the future hold for St. John's? What else is under threat?