'Chorley A&E reopening can be full-time and permanent', claim campaigners

Patients will be admitted to the department once again from 2nd November – on newly-reduced hours of 8am to 5pm – for the first time since the previously 12-hour-a-day facility closed back in March as Covid cases began to spike.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) said last week that it would use locums to plug the remaining gaps in the rota of medics for the unit. Staff shortages meant a previous conditional target to reopen by the end of September was missed.

Seven out of the 12 so-called “senior decision-maker” roles needed to run the facility in Covid-secure conditions have now been recruited.

The emergency department at the Euxton Lane site has been operating part-time since early 2017 – largely as a result of a shortage of middle-grade doctors. The unit had been closed completely for much of 2016 for the same reason.

However, campaigner Jenny Hurley says that the recent recruitment is “game-changing” – and renders invalid a series of reports by clinicians which concluded that Chorley A&E was not clinically viable, because of the difficulties in finding staff.

“What’s more, after Covid restrictions are lifted, the trust will need fewer staff than recently recruited – which will leave us even closer to opening 24/7 again.

“This does beg the question – how have they managed to recruit even more staff in a few months, but failed to secure the staff for reopening over the last five years, causing the initial closure in 2016 and since?” Ms. Hurley asked.

While she said fellow campaigners were “over the moon” at the decision to reopen next month, she also suggested that the “sudden rush” injected into the proceedings was linked to a recent insistence by NHS England that the facility must be back in operation before a consultation into the possibility of its permanent closure could begin.

LTH has said over the past four years that it has repeatedly sought to recruit staff to allow for a 24-hour reopening, but this has never been possible.

It is understood that the proposed use of locums in the coming weeks would not be sustainable in the longer-term – although a recent board meeting heard that efforts continue to fill the remaining vacancies, with offers having been made for several of them.

The Our Health Our Care programme – which is overseeing plans to reconfigure NHS services in Central Lancashire – said over the summer that “an honest conversation” was still required with residents over the viability of Chorley A&E.

NHS England is expected to decide next month whether or not to approve the forthcoming consultation process, which was has been delayed by the pandemic. It will then also have to be given the go-ahead by local commissioners.

The consultation is likely to recommend the replacement of the unit with one of two versions of an urgent treatment centre.

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