Infirmary A&E closure

Following the revelation by Rochdale Online on Thursday of secret plans to close the Accident & Emergency department at Rochdale Infirmary in the evenings, The Chief Executive of Pennine Acute Trust, John Saxby, in a letter to staff, has sought to play down the potential closure by saying that no decision has yet been made.

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All Staff Rochdale Infirmary/ Pennine Acute Trust

Healthy Futures Reconfiguration – A&E Rochdale Infirmary

Dear colleague,

As you may be aware, there has been speculation in the press surrounding the A&E Department at Rochdale Infirmary.

As part of the Healthy Futures reconfiguration programme (which was the subject of full public consultation and was approved by the Secretary of State for Health and the Independent Review Panel in 2007), the current A&E Department at Rochdale will become an Urgent Care Centre in 2011. 80% of patients who attend the current A&E service will be seen in the new Urgent Care Centre.

An Urgent Care Implementation Team chaired by Dr Anton Sinniah, Clinical Director for unscheduled care at Rochdale and Fairfield, has been looking at how the clinical service will move from an A&E model to an Urgent Care Centre model.

We want the transition to the urgent care model to be seamless. Part of this will involve training nurse practitioners to deliver the urgent care centre service at Rochdale. This training could take up to 18 months. The implementation team is therefore looking at how existing A&E staff can be released so that they can complete this training. The recruitment of temporary additional staff, allowing staff to be released for training is one way. Closing the A&E department to emergency cases between 11pm and 8am is another. This would allow rotas to be rearranged so that staff can then be released for training.

No decisions have been made yet on any of the proposals being considered, but the implementation group has been asked to prepare a paper on the options. This will then be considered by the Rochdale Infirmary Steering Group.

Contrary to media reports, the A&E Department at Rochdale Infirmary will not be closing at night from May or June 2010.

Yours sincerely,

John Saxby
Chief Executive