§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wells.]
9.33 pm§ Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield)I am grateful for the opportunity of this debate and for the fact that hon. Members in preceding debates have gone so swiftly through their business that we may be able to have a rather longer debate than we might have had otherwise. That enables the Minister's statement to be reported by The Birmingham Post tomorrow morning. It occurs to me that I should at this stage declare that the newspapers from which I shall be quoting are all published by Midland Independent Newspapers, of which I am non-executive chairman.
I welcome the parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) to his new job. In previous incarnations, we used to joust on transport. He used to sit on the Opposition Front Bench and I used to sit on the Government Front Bench. I hope that our experience will not set a precedent for our exchanges on the development of the health service.
The case that I shall advance on behalf of the Good Hope hospital in Sutton Coldfield is overwhelming. I have followed the development of the Good Hope hospital for more than 20 years and in that time it has faced some serious problems. In all fairness, the hospital's problems have not been confined to the past two or three years or even the past 14 or 15 years. One of the worst problems that the hospital ever faced involved the capital cuts of the 1970s which meant that the much-needed modernised new wards did not materialise. One of the great achievements of the Government in the 1980s, when I was Secretary of State for Health, was to make capital available so that the new wards could be built.
This evening I present to the House a problem which currently affects the Good Hope hospital and the public, and which requires urgent attention. The demand for beds at Good Hope hospital has always been high, but over the past month or so it has reached new peaks. Some patients who should have been admitted have been forced to wait nine, 10 and 11 hours on trolleys in the accident and emergency unit. The demand for hospital services is so high that there is currently about 97 per cent. bed occupancy at the Good Hope hospital.
On Saturday night I paid another visit to the Good Hope hospital without the press or official accompaniment, to see, on the ground, how the unit worked at a crucial time for the accident and emergency unit. Just before midnight there was precisely one bed available for patients in the hospital's regular wards. When that bed became occupied, treatment rooms and day rooms would have to be used to accommodate patients.
Over the past few weeks a number of well-publicised cases have proved that the facilities are inadequate. One of my constituents wrote to me to thank me for supporting the proposal to extend the accident and emergency unit at Good Hope hospital. The letter states:
Earlier this year I had direct experience of the shortcomings of the unit when I was taken seriously ill one evening… I was one of 15 people that night who were unable to be found beds and left on trolleys around the department.464 The Sutton Coldfield News contained an interview with the deputy president of the Royal College of Nursing, who visited Good Hope hospital. She said:
We saw a 92-year-old who came to casualty at 9.20 am with a chest infection. When we came back in at 7.35 pm—just three minutes earlier they had found 'a bed' for her".She said that the bed that had been found
could be in a treatment room 'surrounded by syringes' or in a ward day room".That is correct.On Monday November 6 the Evening Mail detailed the case of a 58-year-old lady who had spent 11 hours on a trolley waiting for a bed in Sutton Coldfield's Good Hope hospital and a further 10 hours in a day room before being found a bed on a hospital ward. There are other such cases.
The Evening Mail of 16 November described a case in which emergency patients, including heart attack and asthma cases, lay on trolleys for up to 18 hours while doctors and nurses treated them in the corridor. That is the problem that we are dealing with at the Good Hope hospital, and especially in the accident and emergency unit.
That accident and emergency unit currently works, under any definition, at full stretch. I pay tribute to the staff, especially the nursing staff, for the enormous contribution that they make. Nothing that I say this evening is a criticism of their care or their standards. Indeed, interestingly, when I receive letters, although there is criticism of the facilities of the unit, almost everyone goes out of their way to remark on and pay tribute to the quality and dedication of the nursing staff and the standard of care that they receive.
If we can achieve what I shall suggest, I believe that the quality of care can be improved at Good Hope.
Let me explain why I have been campaigning for better facilities in the accident and emergency unit.
From the patient's point of view, the accident and emergency unit is the face of the hospital. It is where many patients come for the first time prior to admission. It is thus a crucial unit at Good Hope and it can determine how a patient and their relatives—for one should not forget them—look on the hospital generally.
Several features of the accident and emergency unit are, I say bluntly, unacceptable. I believe that it is unacceptable that people entering the hospital through the accident and emergency unit should be kept waiting for hour after hour on a trolley. I acknowledge that that is exceptional but, exception or not, it should not be part of a modern health service.
It is unacceptable for the accident and emergency unit to be so obviously out of date, with facilities that are so obviously rooted in the 1960s—so clearly incapable of providing the modern surroundings that the public are entitled to expect.
It is unacceptable that the design of the unit is such that it is impossible to make better provision for children. It is an issue that has not been fully ventilated in the debate that we have had about the accident and emergency unit.
Modern practice and common sense demand that children be treated separately from other cases that come into the unit. Let me explain why. Last Friday night—the night before I visited—there was intense pressure on the 465 unit. There was a series of road traffic accidents and there were some stabbings, which had taken place in fights. Any child who was there—two children were there—would see the injuries inflicted and the state of the people who came in. For children, that is obviously unacceptable.
Finally, it is unacceptable that staff, especially nurses, should be placed under the type of pressure that they are being placed under at the accident and emergency unit. Nurses are going home exhausted and sometimes in tears. The number of nurses on shift in the unit is obviously inadequate at times, and that problem needs to be urgently tackled.
I pay tribute to the devotion of the nurses because they work under difficult circumstances—I think that anyone who has visited the hospital will confirm that —but they work heroically under those circumstances.
Let us dispose of one other issue. The issue here is the demand for medical services at the hospital, not the efficiency of the hospital. Good Hope takes patients from north Birmingham, south Staffordshire and general practitioner referrals. Like the health service, the hospital is treating more patients than ever before in its history. That is a great success. It is treating more in-patients, more out-patients and more day cases. The accident and emergency unit is certainly taking in many more patients than at any stage in the past. In other words, the pressure is immense.
Here we come to a curious point about the financing of the cases coming into the unit. Good Hope is contracted to take in advance a particular total of accident and emergency patients for the year. That is set out in advance; a block contract is entered into. But the difficulty comes when the numbers coming to the unit go above that contract. One of the troubles at the moment is that the hospital is finding it difficult to get the resources needed to treat those extra patients. That is an issue of allocation of resources and needs to be tackled.
That is a precis of the problem. Good Hope is an excellent hospital. It has dedicated staff and there is a high and increasing demand for the services that it provides. The real irony with regard to the accident and emergency provision is that the position could be transformed by two relatively inexpensive steps which should now be taken.
First, the accident and emergency unit urgently needs to be modernised. There is no conceivable doubt about that, as anyone who has been to the hospital will confirm. We need to move from the old-fashioned world of curtained cubicles to something that better meets modern needs. As it happens, the reception area of the unit has already been transformed. I know that because I opened it myself two years ago. There is no doubt that, as a result, the reception area is much more welcoming now than it ever was previously. That has been a great step forward. The new capital works there have resulted in a transformation for those coming to the accident and emergency unit. But that is the outer facade. We now need to transform the area behind the reception where patients are taken, examined and treated. The unit itself needs to be modernised.
Secondly, at the same time, a new admissions unit should be built where patients can wait in a small purpose-built ward with permanent beds. That would make long waits on trolleys a thing of the past. Above all, 466 it would give a sense of reassurance to the people being treated—men and women who may be in severe shock and who are certainly extremely concerned about their position. That is why they are so upset about waiting on the trolleys in the first place.
Neither of those proposals are exactly revolutionary. Many hospitals in Britain already have exactly what I am describing. Even more to the point—my hon. Friend may consider this—neither of those steps are exorbitantly expensive. We are talking of spending in the region of not millions and millions of pounds but hundreds of thousands of pounds. That includes not only the capital cost—that is obviously vital and I hope that I have made the case for it—but the revenue cost of the nursing staff who would be necessary to staff the unit.
If the regional and local health authorities examine the position, they will find that the necessary resources can be made available. I do not believe that it will require any new allocation from the Government or from Whitehall to the west midlands.
That is what I urge essentially on the Minister this evening. He will doubtless say that he is not directly responsible for the running of Good Hope hospital, but he has regular talks and regular contact with the regional health authority which is responsible for the allocation of resources. I am making an overwhelming case for the allocation of resources and what is now required is immediate and urgent action along the lines that I have suggested. The Minister will not find many people in the health service or in Sutton Coldfield generally who disagree with what I have said.
Let me add in parenthesis that I have concentrated in this short debate on one particular problem in one particular hospital. If we had a wider debate and more time I would go further. I should like to see an outside examination of Birmingham's hospital services. Above all, I would like an outside examination and evaluation of the demand for hospital care in Britain's second city.
I propose an outside examination because that would provide an objective view of what is required. There is not much to be gained by claims, counterclaims and swapping slogans. I would prefer an urgent examination to be carried out by one man or woman—perhaps with one or two assessors—not so much on the lines of Tomlinson, but more on the lines of the inquiry that I set up with Sir Roy Griffiths into the management of the health service. He carried out that inquiry speedily and produced a succinct report. It was an objective analysis followed by the action that was required. It was to the benefit of everyone in the health service and it settled a particular issue.
I very much welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has made it clear that he will debate health care in Birmingham in the new year. I would welcome it even more if he were prepared to carry out the evaluation that I suggest.
The figures that are now being given by the Department on the demand for accident and emergency facilities are understated—certainly in respect of Birmingham. If the figures are increasing by 3 per cent. per year, my hon. Friend will find that the annual increase of demand for accident and emergency facilities in Birmingham are substantially greater.
I hope that I have put a comprehensive case to the Minister. My purpose tonight in the Adjournment debate is, above all, to call attention to the accident and 467 emergency unit at Good Hope. The Government make available the resources for the health service and the region allocates them more locally. Between them, they can take the decisions that will solve the particular problem that I have set out and which has caused so much justifiable public concern over the past weeks.
Good Hope is an excellent hospital. It provides excellent care and has a devoted staff. I do not want it to be known as the hospital where patients wait on trolleys to be treated. That is totally unjust to the hospital; it is totally unjust to the staff and, above all, it is totally unfair to the patients.
§ Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)With the approval of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), and with the Minister's indulgence, I wish to say a few words.
Good Hope hospital is in Sutton Coldfield and Sutton Coldfield is in Birmingham. The Minister should be reminded of that because his constituency is several hundred miles away from the city. We are talking about a major Birmingham hospital that, as the right hon. Gentleman said, serves his constituency, a good part of north Birmingham, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett), a goodly part of my constituency and the southern parts of Staffordshire.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the issue has not arisen recently. It can be traced back to the 1970s. I was at a major meeting at Good Hope hospital which was attended by about 400 to 500 patients. It took place in about 1977-78. There was a major problem involving the orthopaedic surgeon, whose name escapes me for the moment. He increased the momentum and pressure for change. At the time, there was an horrendous waiting list in north Birmingham. There has been considerable progress since then.
I understand that a debate on the health service is to take place in Birmingham during January. I say to all political parties that will be involved that I want grown-up politics from every one of them. I do not want anyone sailing into Birmingham from my party, the Conservative party or the Liberal party preaching political sloganism. That approach does not help the citizens of Birmingham. We want a dose of grown-up politics in discussing the health service crisis in Birmingham.
The issue is clouded and I support the right hon. Gentleman's argument that an objective look must be taken. The pressure on Good Hope hospital has been accentuated by the closure of the city-centre general hospital. Despite all the reasons for that, which we understand, we have lost several hundred beds in a small district general hospital. That is bound to put pressure on the other district general hospitals.
We know that in recent months there has been a management crisis and a bed crisis at City hospital, Dudley road. That hospital serves a good part of the north and west of Birmingham. That has put further pressure on Good Hope hospital.
At 1.30 pm on 17 January, I was taking a phone call from a constituent. It was about Frances Grew, an 88-year-old lady. She had gone into Good Hope hospital with a major blood circulation problem that was affecting 468 her feet. It so happened that Question Time related to health matters that day. I walked into the Chamber and was called to ask a supplementary question to the second question. I raised the issue of Mrs. Grew and my question appears in column 567. That was probably my quickest response to a constituency case during more than 20 years in this place.
I shall not go into the details of that case, but it related to the time that an 88-year-old lady had had to wait for a bed. She was dumped into a gynaecological ward, which upset her and her family. There had been a wait of five hours. As I have said, I took up the matter in the Chamber and in correspondence. I received letters from the region and the chairman of the trust that runs Good Hope hospital. On 23 March, I was told that the chairman of the trust was hoping for
an improvement in the bed situation in the forthcoming financial year.In other words, I was told in March that things would be a bit better in 1995-96. Since then, as the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Erdington will confirm, the situation has become far more serious. People are now waiting up to 11 hours on a trolley.Good Hope hospital is not a mobile army surgical unit. It is taking mobility to extremes when people are expected to wait on trolleys and to be moved around on them to create space for other people. They are moved out of their beds after 11 pm from one ward to another because of the pressure that is created by people entering the hospital.
That situation has not just arisen recently. In the past couple of days, I was contacted by a former constituent, Janet Taylor. She told me what had happened to her husband, Theo Taylor, on 28 October 1991 when, unfortunately, he suffered a stroke at the age of 48 years. He was taken to Good Hope hospital at 11.30 am. He was on a trolley until 7.15 pm. Then it was found that there were no bed sheets in the hospital. They had to go to two other hospitals to get bed linen.
That tells me that there is a problem of management. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield also said, I have not had a single telephone call, constituency surgery visit or letter that has ever criticised the nursing staff of Good Hope hospital. It is the management of the hospital that people perceive is wrong. The situation with the beds and the trolleys is not new.
§ It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Wells.]
§ Mr. RookerI know that the top management have become a bit frustrated with the attacks on them in the press, and in that respect the Birmingham Evening Mail and the other newspapers have always taken a very pro view of our hospitals. If things are wrong, they have campaigned. It has never been a partisan issue for the press. The management has come in for some stick. Managers have became so short with one of my constituents that they wrote:
If you thought about matters more deeply you would recognisethat the staff are excellent. My constituent had not attacked the staff management; he attacked the management. He was told that the term "management" was old hat. It was old hat because it was not working at Good Hope. That happened in only February this year. 469 There have been other difficulties and major problems, with elderly people being moved around late at night from one ward to another. I understand that a block has now been put on that, and no one, except in the most exceptional circumstances—for example, a clinical need—can be moved from one ward to another after 11 pm. That is the new rule. There is also a new audit so that people do not miss their meals because trolleys are in the wrong place. That issue was raised with me earlier this year. The consequence of people being moved around—not just the wait for treatment and the worry of relatives with the person waiting for a doctor, waiting for a bed or perhaps waiting for a drip—is that people do not get fed. The consequences of all that, subject to the personal circumstances of the individual, can be horrendous, and unfortunately it gives the health service a bad name.I share entirely the views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman: solutions need not cost a bomb. I would have no problem in funding the public expenditure from the Government's balance sheet, because the expenditure is so small that we could get it to about the fifth decimal place when adding up a column of figures. I do not think that any of us is asking for massive amounts of public expenditure, but there is a need to look at what is happening in Birmingham.
The Minister is new to his position, and I congratulate him. Nevertheless, I invite him to look at hospital provision in Birmingham dispassionately. The problem is with not only the hospitals but the community facilities. There is a crisis in Birmingham; it keeps breaking out in different places at different times of the year, but it does not go away. There does not seem to have been any solution in the recent changes. I hope that the Minister will take on board what has been said in the debate and look at the position himself.
§ 10.3 pm
§ Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington)I make it clear that I do not disagree with a word that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler)—my neighbour — and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) said. Good Hope is north Birmingham's hospital. The Sutton Coldfield Observer said everything about the state of the hospital when it reported on 13 October that a senior consultant at the accident and emergency unit at Good Hope was so fed up with what was going on that he quit. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned nine-hour—sometimes 18-hour—trolley waits.
Three weeks ago, the Birmingham Evening Mail, which I congratulate unreservedly on the vigour and strength that it has shown when backing the campaign to get decent hospital services in our city, reported that there was not a single bed available in the city. A crisis arose at Good Hope. Quite properly, it did a trawl of the other hospitals in the city, including Burton on Trent, and was told that there were no beds. The regional authority was quoted as saying that it did not know what the problem was. There were 25 beds available at Selly Oak hospital. The system clicks into action as soon as any hospital experiences trouble. It is a bureaucratic mess.
470 Perhaps I will be given some latitude at this point. It is difficult to discuss one hospital in isolation from the rest. I pin the blame for the acute bed crisis in our city firmly on the regional health authority: that is where the buck stops. The Minister will have found files inches thick on his desk—plans for a "better, healthy Birmingham". That regional health authority, however, has known for at least three or four years of the rising, steady demand for acute and emergency beds. It even set up a regional working party.
As the Minister will know, the same trend can be observed throughout the country. It was originally thought that GPs were using it to jump the queue, but one of the first things that the working party discovered was that that was not the case: more people were more ill and needing acute and emergency admissions, but there were no beds for them. That is the real problem: there are not enough acute beds.
Earlier this year, I tabled a question about the number of acute beds in Birmingham in 1979 and 1993-94. According to a written reply that I received on 18 April, in 1979 there were 4,391 acute beds in Birmingham; in 1993-94 there were 2,918. That represents a loss of 1,473. I understand that there is no magic in bed numbers; it is the use that is made of those beds that is important. The right hon. Gentleman said that there had been a 97 per cent. occupancy rate. However, the number of beds and the staff to run them properly become critical if the beds are not there when the crisis appears on the doorstep. That is the real problem in the city of Birmingham.
The regional health authority has shown itself to be totally incompetent. That is why the right hon. Gentleman and I have said that we shall never get the matter sorted out unless one or two independent experts from outside the city examine the position and produce an action plan. As the Minister will know, unless that is done the people responsible for the crisis will be the only ones asked to examine the reasons for that crisis, and they will not blame themselves; it will have to be someone else's fault. In fact, they were responsible for allocating the resources, and they have seen what has happened to bed numbers.
Along with my hon. Friends, I pay unreserved tribute to staff at all levels—and management—at Good Hope. I thank them for the work that they do under dreadful conditions. I mean that: I am not patronising those people. What I have said has been acknowledged by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I must add, however, that it does not help to be summoned to a meeting in January this year and to be told that three or four departments are to be put out to private tender, and that the trust wants to build three new wards to take in private patients in order to increase its income. I do not want to get into an argument about private patients, but that is what those people were told.
Three months later, the trust announced that it could no longer afford those building operations. That is what drives people mad in the city of Birmingham. Plans are made and announced; then, all of a sudden, someone finds that there is no money. In the case of Solihull hospital, with which the Minister will be familiar, the building was constructed, equipped and staffed; a year later, someone said, "We are going to stop that." That drives people mad, but no one is ever responsible. Millions of pounds of scarce resources are squandered and frittered away as a result of the incompetence of the regional health authority along the Hagley road. 471 As for other pressures on beds, for reasons that I understand, under the system that the Government have introduced, all the pressure is on Good Hope and other hospitals to maximise the number of patients whom they treat from general practitioner fundholders, because the more they treat, the more money they receive. For non-fundholding general practitioners, there is a guarantee that no one will wait more than 13 weeks .for an appointment or nine months for surgery. In reality, I suspect that that is a minimum in each case because of a quarrel with North Birmingham health authority over the details of the contract.
Someone who works in the hospital has written to me, incidentally asking me not to use his or her name because it could lose that person his or her job. Does that not say a great deal about what is happening in the health service? Someone could lose his or her job for speaking up, on behalf of patients. That person says that the result of that pressure to treat more patients of fundholding GPs is that
the wards are full, leaving no room for emergency admissions.I want to Minister to understand this one. I know that he is not responsible for running Good Hope and that the main responsibility rests with those wretched incompetents on the regional health authority, but he has a duty to ensure that, within the money available, Birmingham gets a system that can guarantee that people needing acute and emergency treatment are able to receive such treatment.Two or three weeks ago, in about mid-November, figures for emergency and acute treatment reached peak winter mid-February levels. The logic of that—because there is no sign of that demand decreasing—is that, when we really come to winter, a crisis will come about and lives will literally be put at risk. I do not want to be overdramatic about this, but it follows as sure as Might follows day.
I want to ask just for a little more money than the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr. Because of the change in the basis on which funding is allocated to Birmingham and the west midlands, it is estimated that there is a shortfall of about £25 million a year in the money that the city hospitals need, and of around £5 million a year for general practitioners and primary health care services. Those are not large amounts of money. No one is necessarily expecting that, when the Minister goes to Birmingham—as I hope that he soon will—he will have such cheques with him, but this problem will not be solved unless there is extra early and new investment. The position demands it and I hope that he will accept the need for that.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Horam)I am glad to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) on what is an important issue and I, too, hope that our relationship in health matters will be rather different from that which it once was on transport matters: although our relationship was always good in those days, it was somewhat adversarial. I know that he takes a keen interest in developments at Good Hope hospital and how they affect standards of services provided for residents of Sutton Coldfield and surrounding regions.
472 The hon. Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) both spoke with great passion. I was interested in what they had to say. They took the debate rather wider and I cannot reply fully tonight, but I took note of their points.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will allow me this opportunity to congratulate all staff working at the Hawthorns surgery at Wylde green, Sutton Coldfield on being one of this year's charter mark award winners. They won their award for the high standards of patient service, of which I am sure he is aware, and that is an excellent achievement and one of which they can be justifiably proud. We should not lose sight of the fact that many other first-class developments are taking place both at Good Hope hospital and throughout health services in Birmingham.
My right hon. Friend will, I am sure, be the first to confirm that Good Hope hospital has a strong and positive commitment towards providing high-quality service for its patients, which was reflected in his and other comments. r understand that the hospital recently received provisional King's Fund association accreditation and that it is one of the few hospitals in the country to meet the rigorous requirements of the King's Fund organisational audit programme. Both those benefits stand the hospital in good stead.
Although Good Hope hospital is not large it dealt with almost 220,000 patients last year. Well over 50,000 of those attended through the accident and emergency department, just under 130,000 were out-patients, 33,000 were in-patients and about 8,300 were treated on a day-case basis. That represented a 16 per cent. overall increase on the previous year, and I understand that numbers of people treated by the hospital continue to rise.
No west midlands resident waits for more than nine months for either in-patient or day-case treatment. That is an excellent record. It is better than the standards laid down in the patients charter which require all patients to be admitted within 18 months, while those requiring coronary revascularisation have to be admitted within 12 months of joining the list. Of course urgent cases are dealt with much more quickly. For those who require out-patients appointments the current maximum waiting time at Good Hope hospital is 13 weeks across all specialities.
I share my right hon. Friend's disappointment and concern about the recent spate of reports about patients admitted to Good Hope hospital through its accident and emergency department having to wait for an excessively long time on trollies before being found a bed. Plainly, such waits are totally unacceptable. The patients charter makes it clear that those who are admitted to hospital through an accident and emergency department can expect to be given beds as soon as possible, and certainly within three to four hours. That requirement was clearly not met on a number of occasions that have been cited. We expect all hospitals to work towards meeting this standard and Good Hope is no exception.
I am told that the majority of recent trolley waits at Good Hope occurred during a sudden and unexpected surge in emergency demand throughout Birmingham. Hon. Members will be well aware of the nationwide trend of rising emergency admissions. I understand that between Monday 13 November and Wednesday 15 November Birmingham hospitals coped with significantly more emergency cases than expected. In 473 those three days 120 more emergency patients were seen by Birmingham hospitals than is normal in such a short period.
It was an exceptional situation and placed all of Birmingham's hospitals under extreme pressure. As a result it was not always possible for doctors to see some patients as quickly as they would have liked, nor, unfortunately, was it possible always to find appropriate beds for patients as quickly as usual.
That exceptional situation obviously required urgent action to relieve pressure and free beds to deal with the surge in emergency demand. Therefore, North and South Birmingham health authorities issued a yellow alert cancelling all non-urgent admissions for the rest of that week. That allowed the hospitals to concentrate their efforts and resources on treating emergency cases. I am told that the action that was taken was successful and that the situation in Birmingham was stabilised by the end of the week. However, I realise that for those who had operations cancelled at the last minute that action was perhaps less than welcome. I hope that they will understand the exceptional nature of the situation during that short period.
With the benefit of hindsight I have to agree that it would appear that Good Hope hospital experienced more difficulties than other Birmingham hospitals in coping with the problem. That is a matter of considerable concern and it is being addressed by West Midlands regional health authority through discussions between the trust and North Birmingham health authority. I understand that one of the reasons why Good Hope was unable to open more beds to meet demand, thereby cutting the use of trollies, was a shortage of nurses. That problem has already been identified by the trust which hopes that it will soon be resolved following a major recruitment drive to fill vacancies.
Contrary to the impression that has sometimes been given in local press reports, Good Hope is a forward-looking hospital. My hon. Friend the Minister for Health recently had the pleasure of opening the hospital's new —600,000, 15-bed day-case surgery unit. Advances in medical technology enable more and more patients to come into hospital, have operations and go home the same day. That is better for the patient, it means that more patients can be treated, and it reflects the enormous steps in medical technology in recent years. The new dedicated day case unit at Good Hope will allow more than 8,000 patients a year to be treated.
Also, as I am sure that my right hon. Friend will acknowledge, there have been other major capital developments at Good Hope which have either been completed recently or are planned. For example, £4.8 million has already been spent on refurbishing wards throughout the hospital, £2.7 million is being spent on a new dental and pharmacy suite, and £500,000 is planned for enhanced patient facilities.
474 None the less, the difficulties in the A and E department, which my right hon. Friend so cogently explained, are serious. In response to those problems, I have looked at the situation with considerable care since my appointment as a Minister. It is one of the things that has been at the top of my agenda during that period—a short period, but nevertheless one in which I gave the problems high priority.
I am therefore glad to be able to make two announcements. First, the west midlands regional office of the NHS executive has just approved a £1.4 million redevelopment at Good Hope to provide two additional emergency operating theatres. Those new theatres will reduce the strain on resources at times of peak demand in the accident and emergency department. That will mean better services for the patients who are accepted at Good Hope.
Secondly, my right hon. Friend mentioned at some length and with some fervour the problems arising from the out-of-date design of the A and E department and the extremely cramped and inappropriate facilities for children and, indeed, all people who attend the A and E department.
I am therefore very glad to be able to announce also a major face-lift to the Good Hope A and E department. That will mean structural changes within the department to create more space and thereby allow staff more flexibility to treat patients in a manner which my right hon. Friend would expect. Work will begin as soon as possible and be completed with a minimum delay.
That refurbishment has the support of the west midlands regional office, which will ensure that the trust finds the money necessary to meet the development costs.
§ Mr. CorbettI am not trying to score points. Will the Minister make clear whether new money is involved in this welcome tidy-up of the A and E department?
§ Mr. HoramI should make it clear that both the projects that I have announced are definitely being funded with new money.
In addition, my right hon. Friend brought up the suggestion of a new admissions unit. Although I cannot say anything specific about that tonight, I can tell my right hon. Friend that the idea has already been given much thought. I ask him to suggest to the people at Good Hope that they press forward with their business plan as rapidly as they can. The suggestion of such a new unit is clearly sensible and some work has already begun on it.
Those are two clear announcements. I hope that both developments will lead to a significant improvement in the performance of the A and E department at Good Hope hospital, to the benefit of the residents of Sutton Coldfield and the neighbouring areas of Birmingham.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Ten o'clock.