News

Watford General - England's worst acute hospital for privacy and dignity

• Watford General is rated England's worst acute hospital for privacy, dignity and wellbeing, according to a closely-watched NHS national survey carried out in 2024
• Watford also came bottom on this measure in the previous year's PLACE survey - and the situation has got worse
• Watford gets just 65%  for privacy, dignity and wellbeing in  2024 as other local hospitals do much better - Lister in Stevenage gets 90% rating, Luton and Dunstable 78%
• PLACE assessments are an annual appraisal of the non-clinical aspects of NHS and independent/private healthcare settings, undertaken by teams made up of staff and members of the public (known as patient assessors). The team must include a minimum of 2 patient assessors, making up at least 50 per cent of the group.
• Food on the wards at Watford General got a score of 80%, with St Albans City Hospital getting just 76%. Luton and Dunstable ward food rated about the same as Watford, with 81%, with Lister again achieving a high score of 93%.
• The link to the NHS report on the PLACE survey is here.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/patient-led-assessments-of-the-care-environment-place/england---2024#

by philip

Watford General gets low scores from inpatients - Emergency and urgent care are average

• Watford General Hospital is rated below others in England for inpatient feedback, with a 7.7 out of 10 overall score.  Inpatient areas where it got below average scores in an NHS 2023 patient survey were -- Doctors, Care and treatment, Nurses and Leaving hospital, which received a rating of just 6.5 out of 10
• The Hospital rated above average on one measure - 'Operations and procedures' for inpatients.
• Scores for the Watford Emergency Department were about average, although tests were not up to the English average.
• Urgent Treatment Centres at Hemel and Watford were given 7.8 out of 10, which is 'similar to other providers across the country' according to the West Herts Trust which runs both hospitals. However, waiting times for the UTCs got a very low score of just 4.4 out of 10 
• The full scores are on page 8 of the Patient_experience_strategy_Nov24V1D8 document just published.

by philip

Six month delay for Hemel Health Campus plan

• Dacorum Council update on the proposed Market Square Hemel Health Campus or Hub reveals that a key document, due to be ready by May 2025, won't be submitted until the end of the year
• The Strategic Outline Case is vital to progress but is held up in NHS bureaucracy
• There are no details yet of services to be provided in the Hub after the planned closure of Hemel Hospital
• Dacorum Health Action Group Chair Philip Aylett says: 'The NHS needs to put up or shut up about the closure of Hemel Hospital and the plan to replace it with a Campus or Hub. After 15 months of speculation, we are none the wiser about the future of hospital services in Dacorum.
• 'Recent revelations about the recent severe rundown of major services at Hemel Hospital make it vital that the NHS sets out its plans for the future urgently. At the present rate of service cuts for our local hospital, there will be nothing left to transfer to the Hub if and when it is finished.'
• This is the Health Campus team Dacorum release

by philip

Hemel Hospital downgrade gathers pace as more services are cut

• Cardiology, stroke care, clinical oncology, haematology and urology services have all been removed from Hemel Hempstead Hospital in just over three years as the NHS continues to run the site down
• There are just 17 services now offered at Hemel Hempstead. As recently as September 2021 there were 23 available locally
• This is just the latest instalment in the long-term NHS asset-stripping that has seen resources switched from Dacorum to favoured but crowded sites in Watford and St Albans
• Hemel's A&E was shuttered about 15 years ago - and the Gossoms End community hospital in Berkhamsted closed a few years later
• More recently the West Herts Trust moved the valued fracture clinic from Hemel under the cover of Covid
• The further downgrading of Hemel Hospital raises questions about the plans for a Health Hub or Campus in the Market Square - which would house facilities moved there from the current site
• Will anything be left of Hemel's hospital services if and when the Hub opens? 
• A paper setting out the narrowing of the range of services locally available is here:Services-at-Hemel-Hempstead-Hospital

by philip

County Council elections - a chance to make your voice heard on Hemel and Watford hospitals

• The Herts County Council elections on 1 May are a chance to make your voice heard on Hemel and Watford Hospitals
• Why? Because the NHS is run in a way that is completely undemocratic
• The key decisions on our health services are made in secret by unelected bureaucrats and people appointed by the Government. These have often been bad decisions in West Herts
• The only impact voters can have on what happens to our hospitals is via the County Council, which has a Health Scrutiny Committee
• These Committees have strong powers. The  Government says they 'play a vital role as the body responsible for scrutinising health services for their local area. They retain legal duties to review and scrutinise matters relating to the planning, provision and operation of the health service in the area.'
• But the Herts Committee has failed to use these powers effectively. It has made no impact on the NHS trusts and their unpopular plans for a rebuild of Watford General - and the vague proposal for a 'Hub' in Hemel to replace Hemel Hospital
• We need elected people to hold the Trust bureaucrats and placemen to account for their decisions
• If and when candidates and canvassers call round and ask for your vote, please ask them:

- Will you urge the County Council Health Scrutiny Committee to demand a hospital in Hemel Hempstead that will provide enough high-quality hospital services to meet the needs of Dacorum's ageing and growing population for at least 30 years?

– Will you urge the Health Scrutiny Committee to demand that the NHS explore accessible new sites as alternatives to the delayed rebuild of Watford General?

by philip

Trust hides information on waiting times in transparency breach

• Vital information about the performance of Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hospitals has been hidden from the public
• In defiance of transparency guidelines laid down by the information watchdog, the ICO, the West Herts NHS Trust recently removed previous years' Board minutes from its website. The oldest available minutes are from February 2024.
• These national transparency rules state that trusts must publish minutes going back at least three years. This allows the public to compare performance as reported to the Board, including A&E and surgery waits.
• In a further move which shows its determination to prevent public access to this important information, the Trust has, it seems, also ensured that it is impossible to find the previous years' minutes through internet search. Just try Googling 'board minutes West Herts 2022'.

by philip

NHS AND COUNCIL MUST RETHINK PLAN TO CLOSE HEMEL HOSPITAL

Health group says NHS and Dacorum Council must rethink plans to Hemel Hempstead Hospital 

• 11,000 more homes are planned in the new Hemel Hempstead Garden Communities - but the NHS plans to close Hemel Hempstead Hospital
• Dacorum Health Action Group (DHAG) says more and better health services are needed for the Borough to meet the future health demands of an ageing population, with nearly 40% more over-65s in the next 20 years
• Instead, the NHS and Council are proposing an inadequate replacement - a Health Campus or Hub in Hemel's Market Square. This single building on a cramped site would be too small to accommodate the expanded services vitally needed for the Borough's ageing and growing population
• Parking would be a nightmare at the proposed Hub.  The current Hospital has over 400 car spaces - which would disappear under the plans. Where would patients and their families park at the Hub?
• DHAG says in comments on the draft Dacorum Local Plans the  proposals would mean Dacorum Council failing in its legal duty to plan the infrastructure to support the 'required facilities' for future hospital care in the Borough as the population ages and grows

DHAG's response to the draft Dacorum Local Plan is here:

Local plan response

by philip

WEST HERTS TRUST'S EMPTY PROMISES CAN'T BE BELIEVED

Pledges of better and expanded services made by the West Herts Trust to the people of Dacorum less than four years ago have been exposed as empty promises.

• Ambitious and heavily-promoted investment plans for Hemel Hempstead Hospital publicised in 2021 have been drastically scaled back
• The costs of rebuilding Watford General have soared out of control
• Watford General's demands have drained away all the money Hemel expected to get from the national New Hospital Programme

• IN 2021, THE TRUST SAID, IN A 'YOUR CARE YOUR VIEWS', PAPER THAT HEMEL HOSPITAL WOULD:

- 'have a new and unique purpose as the site for specialist planned medical care site for people in west Hertfordshire'

- 'broaden its range and volume of care for people with long term conditions'

- 'expand outpatient services for paediatrics, respiratory, cardiology and dermatology'

- 'be the location for an increasing number of ‘one stop’ clinics.'

• NOW - None of these promises of expanded services is likely to be kept 

- Hemel Hospital is facing likely closure, with the land going to housing

-  all or some of the remaining services will move across the road to a Health Campus or Hub in the Market Square in the Marlowes.

- Hospital services will flatline - as our population ages and grows with much more housing

- No guarantee that Hemel's urgent treatment centre, dealing with 50,000 cases a year, will survive the move

-The Council's draft local plan is very unambitious. It just says that the Campus would provide 'hospital and other specialist facilities that serve the wider needs of the town, and general practice facilities to meet the rising demand in the immediate area'

•  If the Campus does not provide expanded services it won't  properly serve the needs of Dacorum for the long-term future

by philip

TRUST IN TROUBLE AS FINANCES FLOUNDER

• A project to build an endoscopy unit at St Albans City Hospital is going to cost 66% more than originally planned - £30m instead of £18m -  and is already running two years behind schedule, the West Herts NHS Trust has admitted
• 'Construction complexities at the St. Albans site have caused delays' to the endoscopy scheme, the Trust Board has been told
• The Trust's Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer are 'concerned at the design' of the building and have requested an 'urgent review'
• The St Albans endoscopy fiasco casts fresh doubt on the ability of the Trust to successfully build the much bigger £1.4bn 260 ft facility on the sloping, contaminated Watford General car park
• The Trust's overall year-to-date deficit has hit £11.4m - the worst financial performance of any NHS body in the area.  Meanwhile, the NHS Trust that runs Lister Hospital in Stevenage is managing to break even.
• There's little chance of the current Government review of the 'Forty New Hospitals' giving the Trust the go-ahead for the Watford General rebuild - without a drastic improvement in financial performance

by philip