Quicksilver Community Group members and Tareth Casey - Yeovil's Independent Councillor recently met with NHS Somerset and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, to raise our serious concerns at the planned closure of the Hyper Acute Stroke Unit (HASU) at Yeovil Hospital. YDH currently serves 185,000 people across Yeovil and South Somerset, together with North and West Dorset.
Our discussion was constructive; the NHS Somerset team were very open about the problems they’re facing in recruiting specialist staff to keep YDH’s Hyper Acute Stroke Unit (HASU) open, and its allied acute stroke care service. Simply put, they can’t find the people needed to run either of these services from Yeovil; hence the consultation process, and why the proposed options have been put forward.
But, the very idea that vital Stroke diagnostic services might be taken away from a major hospital like ours, still seems inconceivable.
Our Save Hyper Acute Stroke Care at Yeovil petition has now been signed by more than 6,000 people, with more names being added every day. So QCG’s meeting with local health commissioners and key staff who run Somerset’s stroke care services, has come at a critical time...
Recruitment for stroke care remains a big problem. Not just here in Somerset, but nationally across the country. The problem has been recognized since 2014, when it was first suggested that Acute Stroke care at YDH in Yeovil, could be removed - if the necessary staff could not be found to run the service.
The real concern comes when you look into detail at the proposal; the public consultation started earlier this year, was focused around Somerset Stroke Care (as you would expect from NHS Somerset) However the proposal “quietly” highlights one startling point: over 50% of current YDH Stroke patients would be redirected to Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, DCH itself has a smaller facility for Stroke than YDH currently has (at the moment, Dorchester only supports around 100 patients a year). It begs key questions:
How much further expansion will Dorset County Hospital have to carry out to facilitate the 300 (and rising) patients who would be relocated from YDH?
How does Dorset County Hospital recruit, when a hospital with a bigger more established service just 20 miles away is unable to recruit?
Dorset and Somerset currently have very similar setups for Stroke Care. Both have primary and secondary hospitals (Taunton/Bournemouth and Dorchester/Yeovil). Both have very rural areas to cover; each is almost identical distances apart. Yet NHS Dorset have set a programme to expand the Stroke Care at their secondary Stork hospital while NHS Somerset see fit to remove their secondary service...
How is there such a divergence of strategy across the NHS?
There are other considerations yet to be clarified by NHS Somerset: eg the huge pressures and delays on the Ambulance service and the increased pressure on paramedic staff, the lack of
clarity around how “all” these other outlying hospitals are to take and treat additional patients and what consideration has been given for the rapidly increasing population of South Somerset.
For the group that met NHS Somerset; we left our meeting with plenty more questions still to be answered.
Quicksilver Community Group are planning further meetings with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Dorset and representatives from staff at YDH. We will continue to engage and highlight genuine concerns felt by our community, about the potential health impacts of this proposal.
Please continue to encourage people to sign the petition, share as wide as you can. At 10,000 signatures we can get this issue referred to Central Government