Cllr Caroline ffiske writes:

Last week local residents started contacting me because they had received a Labour election leaflet claiming that the Conservatives plan to “bulldoze” Charing Cross Hospital.  The leaflet depicted Conservatives as the Grim Reaper – a bringer of death.  The depiction of Conservatives as the grim reaper is deeply offensive to myself and my colleagues.  So much for Labour promising kinder and gentler politics.

Below I have set out an update on Charing Cross hospital and present our commitment to local residents on Charing Cross Hospital.  But please bear with me while I make two more comments on the Labour leaflet.

Labour’s Leaflet scares vulnerable people and undermines democracy.

Firstly, some people have contacted me as a result of this leaflet, actually scared that the hospital might close.  These are people who use the hospital and are scared about what they would do  – some of them, older and vulnerable people.  The fact that Labour is happy to casually scare people like this, in order to win votes, is in my view, callous.  So much for concern for vulnerable individuals.

Secondly, if local parties don’t stick to the truth, and enable voters to make up their own mind about the different parties’ policies and priorities then you don’t really have a democracy.  Misrepresenting your political opponents with such a cavalier disregard for the truth undermines democracy.  And where do we go from there?

Most recent update on Charing Cross Hospital

This dates from January this year and is an official presentation made by the “Imperial College HealthCare NHS Trust” to local council authorities.

Please read the detail here starting page 14/15.  I would be pleased to hear your thoughts on all the detail. Some important quotes:

“We have recently seen some of our largest ever investments in new facilities and equipment at Charing Cross Hospital, much of which has been made possible by the support of Imperial Health Charity… 

Over the past 18 months, some £6 million has been spent on major new developments including: Riverside theatres; main outpatient clinics; a new acute medical assessment unit; our first patient service centre; and the main new facility for North West London Pathology.

In addition, we are spending almost another £8 million on replacing imaging equipment and installing two state-of-the-art LINAC radiotherapy machines so we can provide the most advanced cancer treatments…

As part of our investment in urgent and emergency care services and theatres at Charing Cross, we have co-located our acute medicine beds on the ground floor of the hospital, near to the A&E department, and closer to the imaging department. This has enabled medical patients to be admitted more quickly.

In addition, we are currently working up a multi-million pound refurbishment and expansion of the A&E department at Charing Cross, to begin in the early part of 2018. The likely timescales however, mean that the improvements will impact after the current winter period…

The Trust and local commissioners… have put a hold on subsequent work to engage patients and the public in the development of detailed plans for Charing Cross due to increasing demand for acute hospital services…

A commitment to not progress plans to reduce acute capacity at Charing Cross unless and until we could achieve a reduction in acute demand was formalised in the North West London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) published in 2016 …”

Our commitment to you on Charing Cross Hospital

Firstly, we commit to bringing you accurate and sourced information.    We will monitor Imperial Trust’s reports and publications and get relevant items out to you.

Secondly, we will consult you.  I think the Cycle Superhighway planned for Hammersmith is an good example of our approach here.  Our first leaflet on this matter was entirely neutral and simply pointed local residents to the information – something TfL with their huge budgets had largely failed to do.  We spent many hours leafleting local streets simply to get information to local people so they could make up their own minds.

Thirdly, we will represent you.  If and when Imperial Trust comes out with a new round of proposals and consultation we will be led by what local people think.  It is entirely evident to all of us that residents regard our local hospitals as hugely important.  But the details of any plans are also important and we will seek to transmit to you these details, and then to understand, and then represent your views.

Above all, I expect almost everyone reading this and all the local Conservatives will fight to retain, upgrade, and improve our local hospitals.

Thank you for reading and all comments and feedback, as ever, appreciated.  Email me at carolineffiske@gmail.com.

Local GPs are reminding residents in Hammersmith & Fulham that it is easier to make a GP appointment at a time that suits them, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays.

Residents can pre-book GP appointments from 8am-8pm seven days a week and practice nurse appointments on weekday evenings and Saturdays.

These hours are in addition to existing GP services, meaning that residents now have access to primary care from 8am-8pm seven days a week.

Any patient registered with a Hammersmith & Fulham GP can access these appointments at three practices across the borough. Appointments can be booked at any one of these practices through your local GP practice or by calling NHS 111 when your GP practice is closed.

This means Hammersmith & Fulham residents can make an appointment with a GP or nurse at a time and in a place that is convenient for them.

This offering improves GP services as well as:

• Improves patient experience
• reduces avoidable A&E visits and unscheduled hospital admissions.

Dr James Cavanagh, Vice Chairman for the Hammersmith & Fulham Clinical Commissioning Group said:

“Our aim is to make GP services safer and more accessible for all. We are delighted to announce these positive changes. Previously, patients have told us that they were concerned about the lack of access to GP and nurse appointments. By increasing access to these services we are responding to concerns.”

For more information or to book an appointment with a GP or nurse please contact your local GP practice or call NHS 111

You can book an appointment from your own practice with a GP at 3 practices across the borough in the evening or at the weekend.

During your practice’s opening hours, you can call and book an appointment at one of these sites for an evening or weekend appointment.

On Saturdays, at all sites, pre-bookable Practice Nurse appointments are also available which can be booked through the patient’s registered GP practice.

Brook Green Medical Centre
Bute Gardens
London, W6 7EG

Opening Times:
Monday – Friday: 18:30 – 20:00
Saturday:08:00 – 20:00
Sunday: 08:00 – 20:00

Cassidy Medical Centre
651a Fulham Road
Fulham
London, SW6 5PX

Opening Times:
Monday-Friday: 18:30 – 20:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 15:00
Sunday: 09:00 – 15:00

Parkview Practice (Dr Canisius & Dr Hasan)
Parkview Centre for Health & Wellbeing
Cranston Court
56 Bloemfontein Road
Hammersmith
London, W12 7FG

Opening Times:
Monday – Friday: 18:30 – 20:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 17:30
Sunday: 09:00 – 13:00

The Imperial College NHS Trust chief executive Dr Tracey Batten and North West London collaboration of clinical commissioning groups chief officer Clare Parker have challenged Hammersmith and Fulham council leader Stephen Cowan over inaccurate and misleading claims about Charing Cross Hospital.

A recent letter from Cllr Cowan to all of the borough’s residents says that ‘NHS bosses have re-launched plans to close Charing Cross’ as part of the north west London sustainability and transformation plan (STP).

In their joint response, Dr Batten and Ms Parker point out that there have never been any plans to close Charing Cross Hospital and that the STP actually makes a clear commitment that there will be no reduction in Charing Cross’s A&E department or wider services within the lifetime of the plan – that runs until April 2021.

They also highlight the recent £2.5 million investment in urgent and emergency care services and theatres at Charing Cross.

The letter goes on to say that it’s more important than ever for the NHS and local authorities to work closely together.

It says:

We are writing to express our concern at your leaflet ‘Save Charing Cross Hospital – stand with us to fight the latest closure plan’ (attached), which you circulated with council tax updates to the residents of your borough this month. This material made a number of incorrect and misleading claims about the future of Charing Cross Hospital which is likely to cause significant, unnecessary distress to patients and staff.

As you will be fully aware, there have never been any plans to close Charing Cross Hospital.

You will also know that, far from “re-launching” proposals for changes at Charing Cross, the North West London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) made a clear commitment that there will be no reduction in Charing Cross’s A&E department or wider services within the lifetime of the plan (that runs until April 2021). And we recently updated you on a £2.5 million investment in urgent and emergency care services and theatres at Charing Cross.

Like the rest of the NHS, we are working hard to respond to growing and changing demand, especially to support frail and elderly patients with a range of health problems. We also want to continue to offer the residents of NW London the very best in specialist health care, as we do, for example, at the Trust’s dedicated heart attack centre, stroke unit and major trauma centre. And this is all within the context of increasing financial pressure. It’s more important than ever that the NHS and local authorities work closely together to develop better and more integrated ways to help local people stay as healthy as possible and to get fast access to the right care when and where they need it.

As such, we do believe health and care services need to continue to change along the lines set out in the service strategy for NW London, agreed in 2013 following a full public consultation. We made further commitments through the STP that we will work jointly with communities and councils to design new models of care as set out in the strategy and that we will first progress and test new out-of-hospital models before looking to reduce acute hospital capacity.

It is difficult to understand why the Council would choose to spend significant sums of public money fighting ‘closure plans’ that do not exist and when your NHS partners have clearly set out that service changes over at least the next five years will be focused on providing better ways of helping local people stay healthy and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions or long stays.

As such, through this letter, we are raising a formal complaint with you regarding this publicity material and its content which we believe has clearly breached the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, specifically around objectivity and even-handedness. We request that you stop any further promotion of this leaflet and publicly retract your misleading claims. Further details on the grounds for our complaint are attached.

We will be making this response publicly available as part of the effort now required to reassure residents, patients and our staff that Charing Cross Hospital continues to be a vital part of the Trust and the NHS in NW London, and that we are continuing to invest in its future.

Research has established that there are no health risks from “passive vaping”. There is no law against vaping in public places. It is a highly effective method for smokers to give up. Yet Hammersmith and Fulham Council bans vaping on its premises – without being able to give any proper justification for doing so.

I wrote to Debbie Morris, the Director of Human Resources as follows:

“I was concerned to see from this FOI response that “staff and visitors are expected to vape outside” from Council premises.

https://www.apps7b.lbhf.gov.uk/cus/servlet/ep.getImg?ref=D387184&st=NOHEADER&auth=10051

Please note that Public Health England argue that we should make a distinction between smoking and vaping.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaping-in-public-places-advice-for-employers-and-organisations

I would propose that council staff should be encouraged to give up smoking by being allowed to vape from their desks. Please may I have your comments.”

She replied:

“Thank you for your email dated 7th November. In response to your query ‘that council staff should be encouraged to give up smoking by being allowed to vape from their desks.’

“Vaping is covered under the same restrictions as cigarette smoking under the current workplace policy. All policies are regularly reviewed according to latest evidence. HR and Public Health are committed to a joined up tri-borough approach and policies relating to vaping will be reviewed jointly due to the rapidly emerging evidence base.”

Some residents may remember that Shaun Bailey was the Conservative candidate for Hammersmith in the 2010 General Election. Unfortunately he didn’t make it but the good news is that this year he was elected a member of the London Assembly and he has already produced an important report about saving lives for Londoners.

He says:

“Placing defibrillators in disused and redundant phone boxes is a fantastic way of getting life-saving devices into highly visible and easily accessible locations.  My research found 10,211 people suffered a cardiac arrest in London in 2014/15 and, despite the London Ambulance Service having some of the best performance ratings in the country, survival rates remain as low as nine per cent.”

The cost would be relatively modest and Hammersmith and Fulham Council has a huge annual Public Health budget of £22.7 million which is overwhelmingly wasted. So I wrote to the Council’s Director of Public Health Mike Robinson proposing that the Council back the scheme:

Mike,
Please advise:
1. Whether your team provides any training in secondary schools for pupils in First Aid and specifically cardiopulmonary resuscitation and using Automated External Defibrillators.

2. Whether there are any plans to fund from your budget the adaption of redundant telephone boxes in Hammersmith and Fulham for defibrillators. I gather BT offer a scheme of selling the phone box for a pound and the cost of installing the defibrillator is around £1,000.

My questions were prompted by reading this report which provides more
background:
http://glaconservatives.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Never-miss-a-beat.pdf

Best wishes,
Harry

The reply I got was as follows:

Dear Cllr Phibbs,

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the potential use of public health budget to support initiatives for increasing the availability of and the training in the use of defibrillators in community settings.

Although this is clearly an initiative that has been found to have some benefit in aiding in the acute response to cardiac arrests, and is something that has had recent Government support as well as from organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, available public health budget is currently targeted where possible on primary prevention and not for acute response.

Therefore, in response to your questions:

1.This is not something the public health budget is currently used to support and therefore no public health funded initiatives currently take place that support or provide training in secondary schools for pupils in First Aid and specifically cardiopulmonary resuscitation and using Automated External Defibrillators.

2.There are currently no plans to use the public health budget to fund the adaptation of redundant telephone boxes in Hammersmith and Fulham for defibrillators.

Please let me know if you would like to discuss further.

Regards

Mike Robinson

A very disappointing response. Really just a policy of inertia. The challenge should be for the £22.7 million to save as many lives as possible. But the Council just leaves the bureaucrats to drift along while the councillors supposedly in charge collect their allowances. A terrible failure of leadership.

A guest post from Cllr Andrew Brown

Today, 24^th of March, is World TB Day. This is of particular significance this year, as tuberculosis has become for the first time in many years, the deadliest infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people last year. TB has overtaken Aids/HIV as the leading infectious killer, and that is partly because it is a difficult disease to deal with. It is not easy to diagnose and its treatment is lengthy requiring over six months of treatment with multiple pills every day. TB is also a disease of the developing world, so unfortunately has not attracted as much funding from government or the pharmaceutical industry for the development of new treatments and vaccines.

What is particularly concerning about TB is that in some countries, the levels of the disease that are resistant to some or virtually all antibiotics is becoming worryingly high. If this trend continues, TB could become as much of danger in 21^st century Britain as it was in the 18^th century.

I was privileged to attend the All Party Parliamentary Group on Tuberculosis events in Parliament yesterday, and have a personal connection to the academic side of TB, as my first job after finishing my university studies was for the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College researching the impact of the Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s funding in the developing world.

The Global Fund, like the Gates Foundation is an incredibly important NGO that is doing important work to help eradicate diseases worldwide. As a conservative I am extremely proud of the support that this Government has provided to the Global Fund, being the third largest donor. This is extremely important this year, as the Global Fund raises money through replenishments, and this year is a replenishment year.

But what does this have to do with Hammersmith & Fulham? Many of you may be surprised to know that TB has unfortunately become a problem again in the UK and in particular in London. Whilst the incidence has fallen since 2011 due to action taken by the Government and the NHS it is still a concern, especially for some of London’s most deprived communities.

Hammersmith & Fulham unfortunately has on average 43 cases per year (2012-2014). This may not seem a lot, but compared with the national average of around 12 per 100,000 population, H&F’s is twice that at 24.2 per 100,000. I am going to write to the clinical commissioning group and the council to ensure that we are doing all we can to reduce the incidence of TB in H&F.

TB is something we have the knowledge and treatments to eradicate globally, especially if we address anti-microbial resistance. Let’s make a start by eradicating it Hammersmith & Fulham and across London.