Big changes are planned for the way hospital services are organised on Merseyside.
The changes could mean a move to create a hub for specialist, planned, elective surgery at the Royal Liverpool hospital site with emergency or acute surgery to be carried out at Aintree Hospital.
The move, which will affect patients across Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley will affect five key areas – general surgery, breast surgery, nephrology (kidney) medicine, vascular surgery and neurology.
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Speaking at a meeting of Knowsley Council’s health and adult social care scrutiny committee tonight, January 25, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust medical director Dr Tristan Cope said the move was aimed at improving quality of care and treatment for patients and avoiding duplication across services.
Dr Cope said: “This is very much about improvement of quality of clinical services, improving outcomes and improving patient experience, but also improving our ability to recruit workforce, to sustain that workforce.”
He said the plans has come about following the merger of Royal Liverpool Hospital and Aintree Hospital in 2019 and comes after several other key services have been or are in the process of being merged.
Dr Cope said; “It’s about the Aintree site becoming a more acute site deal with more emergency case and the Royal Liverpool site dealing with more complex planned cancer surgery with its close location to the Clatterbridge specialist centre for cancer care as well so those services fit together well.”
Outpatient and daycare services will still, for the most part, be carried out at both sites, under the proposals.
Dr Cope said: “For all of these services, the reconfigurations we’re proposing are around the inpatient beds and specialist activity but maintaining access in terms of outpatients and diagnostics on both site”
Councillors at Knowsley, alongside those at Liverpool council and Sefton Council are being asked to consider whether the changes represent ‘substantial variations’ to service.
If each of the councils agree, this means a process involving consultation with the councils’ scrutiny committees as well as a wider consultation will take place ahead of the planned implementation date, which is being timed to coincide with the opening of the new Royal Liverpool Hospital, which is due to take place in September.
If all councils agree the changes are ‘substantial variations’ this would mean a more involved consultation process. Sefton Council’s meeting is due to take place on January 31, and Liverpool met yesterday to discuss the proposals.
Knowsley councillors took a vote on each of the five planned changes and agreed all represented substantial variations.
If Sefton agree the same, the councils will then convene a joint scrutiny committee to be kept up to date with the plans, which will also go to public consultation before being moved forward.
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