OPINION: Rochdale left with the stick... again!

Rochdale Infirmary

When you come to the end of a lollipop,
To the end, to the end, of a lollipop,
When you come to the end of a lollipop,
Plop goes your heart!

Gilly oh golly, Oh I love my lolly,
Down to the very last lick,
But when you are through with it, what can you do with it?
All you have left Is the stick.

Sung by Max Bygraves

Well, at last what we have long predicted and feared will soon come to pass.

Rochdale’s last hospital will soon close its doors to patients because of financial pressures. Do I need to rephrase this? No, I don’t think so. In the public perception, a building where they only do day-case surgery and hold out-patient clinics is no longer a hospital. Call it a clinic, call it a surgery, call it a first-aid dressing station but don’t for God’s sake refer to it as a hospital.

All we’ll have left, as the old song goes, is the stick and boy, and we have had plenty of that since the four health trusts merged!

Yes, yes, I know. The talking heads from the Trust will try to reassure us and tell us that Rochdalians will still be able to access high-quality health care in the same way that citizens of Oldham, Bury and North Manchester will. We’ll just have to travel further for it with all the extra time, inconvenience and money that will mean for us, our families and our friends.

There is also a matter of local pride.

Even cottage hospitals have overnight facilities. The only person likely to be there overnight from April 2011 will be the odd security guard or burglar chancing his luck; not that there will be much left to steal.

Yes, we know that the mantra is that the Trust is being forced to cut back in order to protect services. However, we also know that Rochdale has been seen as ‘the sick man of the partnership’ since the Trusts first merged.

When the Pennine Acute axe had to fall, it was always going to land on one or other of Rochdale’s services.

All the talk about ‘centres of excellence’ when applied to Rochdale has been pure hokum. The fact remains, a town of almost 100,000 people is not thought worthy enough to warrant a hospital with some in-patient beds. We were always the young cabin-boy in the lifeboat getting increasingly nervous as his shipmates looked at him with hungry looks on their faces.

Let me remind you, again, what was promised with the merger:

“There has been major capital investment to improve the physical environment for patient care at our hospitals and further improvements are planned. By April 2002, our services will be provided at the five hospital sites of Fairfield General, Bury, North Manchester General Hospital, The Royal Oldham Hospital, Birch Hill Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary.”

Public consultation document on a proposal to establish a new NHS Trust at Rochdale, Bury, Oldham and North Manchester (2001).

Now, nine years later, all we have left is the stick!

Will the last person to leave please stack the chairs and switch off the lights?