IT was with interest I read the comment which was featured in one of the national newspapers by Steven Crowder, A&E consultant at our Warrington Hospital.

He gave a ‘snapshot’ of what it was like at 11.30am on a recent Tuesday.

It confirmed what most people already know, which is that the hospital, especially the A&E department, is under immense pressure.

He went on to describe in great detail, the actual situation and what it is like to be involved in it day to day.

What he did not mention was the money that has been invested into the hospital over the past few years; as has been reported also in the Guardian, and the measures that have been undertaken to improve and update the facilities.

A total of £50million has been recently spent and invested.

At A&E, £1.4million has been spent in re-designing it to create more capacity and increasing staff levels and a further £2million was spent providing a full acute medical unit for emergency admissions to hospital.The Guardian reported in December 2012 that, ‘the focus of the new acute medical unit, with help of 38 new nurses, two extra consultants, with eight additional consultants in the unit by (last April), is about meeting the national guidance for seeing the right person in the right setting, first time’.

A £7million intensive care unit providing critical and high dependency care.

Money has been spent also in improvements across many other areas with investment in new wards, departments and units including chemotherapy, endoscopy and ophthalmology facilities.

The trust has an annual turnover of more than £210million. A £50million spend in the past three to four years represents a massive 23.8 per cent; nearly a quarter of a yearly turnover; so how can Helen Jones our Labour MP constantly attack the coalition government and keep telling us that it is underfunding our hospitals? She and Nick Bent are playing politics with our NHS all the time.

It is patently obvious where the problems lie.

There are now far too many people attending our hospital who should not be doing so. Why is that?

Andy Burnham has admitted there were ‘problems’ with the GPs out of hours service reforms introduced by the Labour Government in 2004 with the new GP contract. Changes to that contract took responsibility of out of hours care away from GPs. Since then 90 per cent opted out of providing out of hours care and at the same time got a pay rise doubling their salary. Since those disastrous changes to the GPs contract, we have seen a significant rise in attendance at A&E.

In the old days it used to be hospital was the last place you went to if there was something wrong with you. Now it seems it has become the first place to go.That has to change back again if we are to accommodate the extra pressures on our hospital from people living longer and increased immigration.

A EDWARDS
Fearnhead