Women's Services From Liverpool Women's Hospital To Be Dispersed Into Overcrowded Hospitals

Will we see Women giving birth in hospital corridors?

 

Despite their being massive objections from pateints, the general public and medical staff, and because there is no true accountability from the Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care Board; games and dishonesty is the playbook that is governing decisions about women's health in the Merseyside and Cheshire area.

NHS authorities in Merseyside have been questioning the existance of the Liverpool Women's Hospital since 2014, and ignored completely the detailed response from campaigners, including evidence from midwifes, nurses, patients, and the public.

They have ignored petitions now signed by over 80,000 people, ignored evidence presented by campaigners, and paid out around £150,000 from NHS funding to employ business accounts and consultancies, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to determine that Liverpool has too many hospitals and that the Women's Hospital should go. At least that is the view of many of the public based on the ICB's own documents.

 

Save Liverpool Women's Hospital Campaign will lobby the ICB's meeting on Thrusday 29th January from 12 noon The Holiday Inn, Lime Street, Liverpool L1 1NQ over their proposed options on the Women's Hospital and its specialist Gynaecology and Maternity services; which has been clearly attacked and targeted for closure for the last 10 years!

 

The Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care Board at their meeting this Thursday are set to approve a report with several options for Liverpool Women's Hospital, all of which will take services away from the hospital at the Crown St site.

 

The ICB favoured option is 2 which sets up some 'high risk'  maternity and gynaecological provision in the Royal Hospital which is over crowded and has some 45 less beds than its former building had!

Campaigners Ask:

• Why has there been so much waiting and suffering in A and E, so much corridor care, so many long trolley waits for admission to the wards, all of which costs lives, pain and indignity at the Royal, if there is spare capacity in the hospital available for Maternity, neonatal, and gynaecology on Level 9?

• Why is there no mention of the opposition to these plans from the community, trade unions, and campaign groups? We refer you to this comment from the ICB own papers, 24 07 25

• Why are the financial (both capital and revenue problems) of LWH mainly based on the issues with the Maternity Tariff, not mentioned in these options?


• How will any of this help the hospital's financial problems? Will these options not increase the administrative load?


• Why are there no costings, and why is there no mention of the likelihood of gaining significant capital spending for these options?


• In earlier papers from the ICB and the hospital board, the additional cost of keeping the dedicated services on Crown Street was described as approximately £6million extra per year. The cost of a rebuild was defined as "up to £336 m-£549m".

We pointed out that it would take up to 91 years for rebuilding to be cheaper than providing safe care at Crown Street.

• Why is this paper not set in the context of the national Maternity crises, when hospitals with some of the configurations described here have had terrible outcomes for babies and mothers?

Professor Marian Knight, Director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit and MBRRACE-UK maternal reporting lead, said: 'These data show that the UK maternal death rate has returned to levels that we have not seen for the past 20 years." Clearly, this has not been helped by moving Maternity into general and acute hospitals.

• Why no mention of midwife staffing, nationally one of the major causes of stress, not specific to LWH on Crown St (see risk 5 below)1

• Risks are asserted without proper evidence, the SLWH campaign  produced a detailed response to these assertions (see attached for further details)

• Why was the Save Liverpool Hospital Campaign excluded from this round of consultations, especially after previous assurances that we would be involved?

We demand:

• Full public funding for LWH on its Crown St Site
• Urgent investment in maternity care to improve staffing, and facilities and tackle inequality to make maternity safe
• A publicly owned, publicly provided NHS, fully restored, repaired, rebuilt

1. "Risk 5 - Women receiving care from women’s hospital services, their families, and the staff delivering care, may be more at risk of psychological harm due to the current configuration of services."  Stress levels are no different to the national average. 

2. RCN press release April 2024 states that "24.5% of nursing staff are off work with stress, anxiety and depression. It is so widespread it accounts for 1 week of absence per year for every practising nurse."  Therefore LWH is in line with the national average.
   Here's the link for the reference:  NHS sickness data shows average nurse took entire week off sick last year due to stress-related illness | Royal College of Nursing

You can keep up to date on the campaign to Save the Liverpool Women's Hospital here