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The Daisy Hill Hospital Future Group have met with representatives of the Southern Trust’s senior management team this week. The Trust announced an interim Stabilisation Plan for Daisy Hill at its Board Meeting on 25 May because of significant staffing challenges in Acute Medicine at the Hospital.
The Future Group has sought and received absolute assurances from Peter May that these staffing challenges would be addressed, and that Daisy Hill would remain a key part of the Northern Ireland hospital network.
The Future Group meeting with the Trust focused on discussing the detail of the Trust’s interim stabilisation plan, the progress being made, and advised how communications could be improved to allay concerns of staff and local people who depend on Daisy Hill for acute hospital care about the planned service changes.
Recruitment difficult
Dr Stephen Austin, the Trust’s Medical Director, said that the medical staffing challenges in Daisy Hill were also being experienced in hospitals across Northern Ireland and the UK. Because of these medical staffing shortages in certain specialties, it was proving difficult to recruit locally, and he advised that the Trust was planning a major international recruitment drive to secure doctors to fill posts across the Trust, and specifically prioritising the gaps in staffing at Daisy Hill. A specialist agency has been engaged and a team from the Trust will be going to India in September with the expectation of recruiting up to 100 qualified doctors over the next year. In response to the need to provide local accommodation for the anticipated arrival of new international staff, a dedicated working group comprising Future Group representatives, Trust personnel and the Chamber of Commerce will explore any and all potential options for housing these new staff, and providing links to support networks to make sure they are warmly welcomed into the local community.
The direct support being provided by three of the Trust’s Divisional Medical Directors to medical staff in Daisy Hill Hospital was explained, and Dr Austin also confirmed that 2 experienced locum consultants would transfer from Craigavon to Daisy Hill by the end of August, working as part of the medical rota to reduce the work pressures on the Daisy Hill Medicine team. He also confirmed that the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency (NIMDTA), who allocate doctors in training to Northern Ireland’s hospitals, have agreed to allocate the same number of junior doctors as in previous years and they have also confirmed that there are enough senior medics available to support junior doctor training.
The plans for the High Dependency Unit (HDU) were discussed at length, the Trust confirmed that HDU beds may have to be temporarily moved to a different location within the hospital as a result of challenges in providing medical cover. The Future Group strongly recommended that these plans be paused and reviewed as HDU was an important component for the future provision of services to complex patients in Daisy Hill Hospital.
An update on progress to establish an 8 bedded short stay unit aimed at avoiding the need for hospital admission, to be staffed and managed by the Emergency Department, was also provided, to be located in the area beside ED which previously housed the Direct Assessment Unit (DAU). The DAU beds are now part of a new Ambulatory Unit, temporarily located on Level 3 but with a plan to co-locate in a new space beside the ED. Mary Burke, the Trust’s Chief Operating Officer at Daisy Hill Hospital, spoke about how well this new Ambulatory Unit was working, the high volume of patients treated in this Unit and the successful recruitment of staff to work there.
In terms of timely discharge from hospital Trudy Reid, Director for Unscheduled Care in the Trust, confirmed that additional recruitment to the Acute Care at Home team and other community teams was ongoing, but advised that there were recruitment challenges particularly for domiciliary care staff. The plan remains to reduce the number of patients in Daisy Hill Hospital who no longer need hospital care but who are waiting for community support services.
Dr Austin outlined that these service changes were individual but interdependent parts of the overall Stability Plan for Daisy Hill, and he accepted the Future Group’s proposal that a ‘road map’ setting out the changes and the conditions required to make these changes successfully was needed and should be communicated to staff and stakeholders.
Expert Panel welcomed
The creation of an Expert Panel to oversee the implementation of the stabilisation plan was acknowledged as a very welcome development. The Panel will have an independent Chair, Mairead McAlinden. Mairead has worked at a senior level in Northern Ireland Health and Care Services and was a Chief Executive in the English NHS before retiring and now works independently as a healthcare advisor. The Panel will include independent clinical advisors, Trust managers and senior clinicians. The Panel’s role will also include advising the Trust’s Chief Executive on the longer term plans for Daisy Hill, examining any proposals emerging from a Regional Review of Hospital Services being led by the Department of Health. The Panel will actively engage with staff and key local stakeholders including the Future Group, actively listening to their concerns and including these in the Panel’s recommendations. The Panel will meet for the first time on 9 August.
