Warning - check what your area's STP says

[AlsoConfused]

Many of the NHS draft Sustainability & Transformation Plans (STPs) have now been published and everyone will soon have a time-limited, topic-limited opportunity to comment on them. It's very important for all of us prospective patients and carers to find out about these plans and have our say. Many people will want to lobby their MPs, councillors and patients' groups (eg Alzheimer's Society, PALS, etc) as well as making individual representations. We'll need to get our skates on if we want our voices heard.

The draft STPs all propose massive cuts in the number of hospital beds (in both acute services and community hospitals) and hospital closures, with hospital sites being sold off. Much more of the clinical and nursing care that would normally have been provided on a hospital in-patient or out-patient basis is to be delivered through GP surgeries; to a far greater degree than now, patients are to stay in their own homes rather than on a hospital ward. One draft STP speaks of patients being helped to "have skills and confidence to take responsibility for their own health and well-being".

These draft STPs have been developed in great secrecy by CCG and hospital trust leaders and the biggest of the areas' local authorities. The local authority leaders have in some cases revolted against the secrecy and insisted on publishing information on the STPs. It seems that the GPs, health visitors, frontline social care providers and patient groups have had no input into developing the draft STPs. As they've had no input into developing the plans, no-one knows whether the GPs, health visitors etc can or will take on the new roles the STPs envisage for them.

You'd be able to track down whether your area has published a draft STP by Googling [county],STP.
The
draft Leicestershire STP is pretty typical so you might like to investigate it.

 

[PeggySmith]

Bathnes - nothing.

 

[nitram]

If you work your way through the attached you can convert your area into a footprint and then search on that footprint.

 

[AlsoConfused]

Thanks for that helpful advice on tracking down each area STP's plans for hospital closures and reduction of healthcare services, nitram.

I spoke to friends today (husband was a GP, wife was a nurse then a Social Care Manager and a son is a practising GP). They think it's totally impractical to pass on the patient care normally provided by hospitals onto the GPs because the GPs are already overwhelmed by the existing workload. They hadn't heard about the local STP though the wife had heard about the national initiative.

I spoke to another friend with a GP son about the planned closure of one of our 3 acute hospitals and at least 2 of our 8 community hospitals. She knows more about the hospital earmarked for closure than I do so she asked where is the renal treatment facility to go then? Apparently the renal treatment facility is too big to be added to either of the other remaining hospitals.

Presumably the intention is for our kidney patients - ill and exhausted as they are because renal failure leaves you feeling pretty dreadful from the early stages onward - to travel a further 30 - 40 miles to hospitals in the West Midlands or to the north of us. The easiest way to travel will be by ambulance or car on the motorways but traffic jams and delays because of accidents are very common.