Agenda item

The Chairman had given his agreement to the following people addressing the meeting:

• Councillor John Sanders, speaking in his capacity of local member, addressed the Committee on the Silver Star Maternity Unit – Item 10  Information Share;
• Patrick Taylor, Chief Executive, Oxfordshire MIND and Alex Taylor, Manager, Bridewell Organic Gardens – Agenda Item 9 – Chairman’s Report – ‘Keeping People Well Project Group.’

Councillor John Sanders expressed concern at the lack of notice given of the closure of the Silver Star Maternity Unit, John Radcliffe Hospital, resulting in an article in the Oxford Mail in which members of the public had expressed their worries about the risks relating to the closure. He asked for details of the planned closure and a timetable leading to its re-opening.

Andrew Stevens, Director of Planning & Information and Susan Brown, Senior Communications Officer, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust had been invited to attend the meeting in order to respond to questions from the Committee. They commented that there had been a significant amount of miscommunication on the part of the media with regard to the situation and welcomed the opportunity to give a true account of the changes to the service. They informed the meeting of the following:

• The service was not closing, exactly the same range of services would be available over the summer months;
• The plans were to reconfigure the service over the summer months, as had happened in previous years, by reducing the number of floors from where the service was provided, from 3 to 2, in order to respond to demand for the service, staff holidays etc;
• The sole driver for the temporary closure was patient safety and midwifery contracts, there being fewer midwives recruited to contracts, due to staff summer holidays;
• In order to provide the same quality of care and effectiveness, services were to be rationalised with a reduced resource base;
• The Trust had monitored issues such as caesarean and mortality rates in past years and there had been no evidence that they had risen in the summer months. There was a 5 - 7% sub set of high risk elements to the service which had to be taken into account; but the Trust also had to ensure that they were looking to the safety of the other 93%. Therefore, in order to deploy resources to their full effectiveness, it was necessary to reduce the number of floors from which the service was provided over the summer;
• Any problems which had arisen in the past, the Trust had learnt from and thus the plans were more robust this year;
• There was no firm date for the reopening of the full service, it would depend on recruitment levels. However, last year the date was earlier than expected because the recruitment process had taken less time than was envisaged.

The Chairman thanked Andrew Stevens and Susan Brown for attending and asked if there would be any change to the level of service provided to the residents of Oxfordshire. Andrew Stevens responded that it was merely a transfer of location, rather than a change in the level of service. He added that the newly opened Oxford Spires Unit had been earmarked almost exclusively for local women and there were delivery suites for low risk women situated on the seventh floor. The element who were high risk would continue to be a discrete area.

Cllr Sanders responded that he had been reassured by the points they had made but asked why there had only been one week’s notice of a planned closure? He added that he now understood why the Trust could not give a categorical reopening date, but staff and mothers would be reassured if a target date could be given. Mr Stevens explained that the plans had been worked up by managers previously, but, due to the nature of the change and the issues raised the previous year, the service had sought the approval of the Trust Board which had met two weeks prior to this meeting. Meetings had then taken place with staff during the week prior to this meeting. Once staff had been told, then a news release was sent to the local media. Unfortunately, by this time, incorrect and unhelpful  had already gone out to the general public.

When asked how far the service would be reduced, Mr Stevens explained that there would only be a net reduction of four beds which would enable staff to operate over two floors only. He added that planning for beds was, as a matter of course, also informed by advance booking activity.

Mr Stevens undertook to notify Roger Edwards of the date when the service would reopen over three floors.