Is Whittington's A&E under threat?

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Permalink Reply by james walsh on November 18, 2009 at 13:03

Yesterdays lunchtime BBC TV news mentioned Whittington and Royal free hospitals merging. It did not say anything about how the A&E's would be affected.

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on November 18, 2009 at 17:54

I have a feeling there's a lot up for grabs that won't become evident till long after the Royal Free/Whittington discussions between managers, senior clinicians and senior execs finish next month. Since RF has premier status, catering for thrice as many patients as W. (and is now headed by W's former CE), it's not likely that a 7% cut across the board will leave all of W's departments still standing, or even limping.

As someone who depends regularly on five or six of Whittington's departments and consultants, I'm not looking forward to being painfully split down the middle - crawling along to Archway on the W5 to catch a C11 for another slow crawl towards Hampstead for half my appointments, only to find the computers are down and my dossier is back at Whittington. Not the most holistic approach to the Aesculapian arts.

It may yet come down to all the politicians and pressure groups of Islington and Haringey ganging up behind Lynne Featherstone to combat the might of Camden/Hampstead. Finance-driven mergers are rarely designed to please the smaller party or its stakeholders and customers.

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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on November 18, 2009 at 19:24

It really looked like a bad copy-and-paste error to me. Why write exactly the same sentence in four different points?

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