Moreton' Hospital Closure

This was sent to BBC Radio Devon this morning.

As the Chairman of the Moretonhampstead Hospital League of friends I was shocked to be informed on Tuesday of this week that on the 31st of January our wonderful hospital is to be closed to in patient beds. The hospital has been a vital part of of the North east Dartmoor community for over a hundred years and has been of incalculable value to the people of the area. Still today it serves a vital role as the majority of the patients are the elderly who come to Moretonhampstead to recuperate after illness. It means that they are closer to their relatives and friends and that visiting them on a regular basis is easier, often just a short drive or walk. With this heartless closure the patients will now be at least 15 miles from home and less likely to enjoy the regular contact with important people in their lives whose presence aids their recovery. 

For those patients already in the hospital and about to be moved there is the  well documented risk to their health of a move to another hospital which, on its own,  can seriously effect their recovery .

Whilst we all know that the real reason for this closure is the cost of maintaining a Community hospital remote from the other hospitals of the North Devon Healthcare Trust and also the fact that the new hospital at Okehampton is operating well under capacity, the NDHCT has decided to take cover behind a Care Quality Commission report which says that the staff at our hospital , because of the nature of the patients get, as mentioned earlier, are not getting a wide enough ‘skill set’ to operate the hospital safely. They and even us as the League of Friends have been aware of this for at least nine months and it has been discussed many times. The Trust has made cursory efforts to encourage the staff to rotate between Okehampton and other hospitals in the cluster but failed to make this ‘up skilling’ happen and despite apparently having a firm rota now in place to start, as I understand it, on 1st Feb, have decided to close the hospital temporarily to new admissions. We sincerely hope that it is their intention to keep this a temporary closure but fear that having stripped us of our patients they have no intention of doing so.

The community of North East Dartmoor is horrified at this situation and a campaign to re open the hospital is beginning. We hope that the NDHCT will engage with us to enable the hospital to re open to inpatients. We will help in any way we can to enable this to happen and I guess we will quickly find out just how committed the NDHCT are to the care in the community which they trumpeted as one of their commitments when they took over just over a year ago.

Sincerely

Philip Fowler

Chairman Moretonhampstead League of Friends

01647 440168