A&E hospital shakeup 'not a done deal'

The consultation could see A&E services relocated from either Southport or Ormskirk

The man in charge of reorganising A&E services between two hospitals in West Lancashire and Sefton has said "it's not a done deal" which site will keep theirs.

The local NHS has already declared the preferred option is to shut the children's A&E at Ormskirk and open a new one at Southport.

Chief executive of Mersey and West Lancashire Trust Rob Cooper said despite that "no decision has been taken", and he insisted public responses to consultations on the proposal will be listened to.

Currently, emergency services are split between Southport, which runs the adult A&E, and Ormskirk, which runs the same service but for children.

Ormskirk also runs the maternity service for the area

Both had full A&E services that treated both adults and children until 2003, when the government decided it would be safer for each site to specialise.

But for many years local NHS health bosses have been unhappy about services being split between two hospitals, which are about seven-and-a-half miles apart.

The consultation is being led by Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and the Cheshire and Merseyside and Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS integrated care boards.

They have said the split has caused staffing shortages, and in Ormskirk, that has led to the children's A&E being closed between 00:00 and 08:00 since 2020.

The group behind the proposal has said bringing the two A&Es together on one site would allow for a round-the-clock service.

They also say it would allow children needing surgery to be treated without having to be transferred, and better access to radiology services out of hours.

The consultation opened in July and runs until October.

Adrian Owens said Ormskirk is the ideal geographical position for an accident and emergency unit

Those in charge have been clear that their preference is to move all emergency care to Southport.

Much of this is to do with the associated costs, with the proposal to transfer the children's A&E from Ormskirk to Southport estimated to require £33m.

But moving adult services in the opposite direction is estimated to cost about £91m, as for safety reasons, seven other services would also have to move as well.

These include general medicine, critical care, elderly medicine, respiratory medicine, medical gastroenterology, urgent diagnostic haematology and biochemistry, and liaison psychiatry.

It is also estimated that ten other services "may be affected".

By contrast the children's A&E could transfer from Ormskirk to Southport with just one other service, paediatric inpatient care, and at just over a third of the cost.

But some campaigners have argued the consultation process is flawed.

"I just think Ormskirk is the ideal geographical position for an accident and emergency unit," said West Lancashire Borough Councillor Adrian Owens.

He said: "If you look at the catchment area, it's right in the centre between Up Holland in the east and Southport in the west.

"It's ideally situated and everyone can get to it."

Sefton Councillor Dr John Pugh said he felt Southport was the "better place" for the services

Over in Southport, the opposite view prevails.

Sefton Councillor Dr John Pugh spent 16 years as the town's MP, much of it campaigning on this issue, and described the proposals as "a twenty year mistake being put right".

"Southport is the bigger place, Southport attracts a lot of children in the summer months," he said

"So I think there's a lot of drive behind the thought that Southport is the better place."

Southport Hospital is an older, more cramped building, while Ormskirk Hospital is a newer building with more space on site.

Although the two hospitals are fewer than eight miles apart, much of the journey is on narrow roads and can be lengthy.

Both have a geographically large, and often rural, catchment area.

Rob Cooper insisted no decision has been made

Mr Cooper is heading the consultation which has been arranged by the various regional NHS bodies and is called Shaping Care Together.

"It's not a done deal. No decisions have been made and we've been really clear about that fact," he said

"Yes there is a preferred option coming into the consultation but that's not the same as a decision being made.

"It gives us the opportunity to listen to what people have to say, bring any new evidence to understand if there are options we haven't considered and any information that perhaps we haven't been able to look at up to this stage."

'Different options'

This consultation is just the first of several looking at the future of both hospital sites.

If the children's A&E moves to Southport, the paediatric inpatient unit will move too. But Ormskirk also runs the maternity service for the area. If these changes go ahead, it would be on a different site from paediatric inpatient services and both A&Es.

But women giving birth without the backup of an emergency department is the main reason being given for proposals to reduce maternity services at the nearby Liverpool Women's Hospital.

When asked what this means for the future of maternity services at Ormskirk hospital, Mr Cooper said the answer was outside of the remit of this consultation.

But he said: "We can look at different options for maternity services.

"There can be midwifery-led units, other different ways of delivering maternity services that we need to consider but that would be the next phase of "Shaping Care Together" and we would need to work up the options to consult."

This phase of the consultation continues until midnight on 3 October, with meetings being held in different parts of the catchment area for both hospitals, along with an online survey.