News

Villagers had the opportunity to quiz the head of the NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust (PCT) at the Hawkinge Community centre on Monday (1 October).

Chief executive Ann Sutton answered questions with top level colleagues from the PCT during a series of three-hour sessions at public meetings held across east Kent.

The other local venues included Dover Town Hall, Pfizer Social Club and the Westgate Hall in Canterbury.

Plans have been submitted for a two storey doctors' surgery and pharmacy on the employment land in Hurricane Way, Hawkinge.

The one acre site would also include parking for 46 cars and one ambulance.

Comments should be made by 8th August 2007.

View the application and plans by clicking here

East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust has confirmed the sale of 19th Century Royal Victoria Hospital buildings in Folkestone but insists service levels will not change.

The decision comes despite protests from a campaign group set up to protect the future of hospital, which it said was wasting £1.2m a year on heating, lighting and cleaning the "almost entirely empty" buildings.

The trust promised savings would go into NHS services in Shepway and Folkestone.

The Save Our Royal Victoria Hospital campaign feared that outpatient services still operating in the Victorian buildings could not be accommodated in the hospital's other premises, but the trust's director of facilities, Howard Jones, insisted: "No services are being removed from the Folkestone hospital, absolutely everything is staying.

"We're going to spend at least £2.5m there... we need to enhance its role as a local hospital offering a wide range of outpatient services.

"Our plans are to create a new Derry Unit on site in the new wing of the hospital."

He added that the proposal for the Victorian premises was to sell them off to a residential developer.

Open days explaining the plans are due to be held at the hospital at the end of June.

 

Former Folkestone GP Clifford Ayling is seeking a judicial review into a government report on his conduct.

The disgraced doctor was jailed for four years in 2000 for 13 counts of indecent assault on 10 women patients between 1991 and 1998.

Ayling has claimed a Department of Health (DoH) report into his conduct was full of errors and had blackened his name.

The DoH commissioned a review into how the NHS handled allegations about the conduct of Ayling following his conviction. The report published in 2004 said a catalogue of complaints made against him - including some from nursing staff - were not properly investigated.

But Ayling told BBC South East Today: "There are so many gross errors in the report and I feel that the public have got a right to know how it is that the Department of Health have managed to publish such a report.

"I have maintained from the very outset that I am innocent, despite the courts."

It was reported by the BBC website that Sarah Harman, solicitor for Ayling's victims, said: "He was convicted in a criminal court of sexually abusing many of his former patients and that conviction stands.

"His reputation has been blackened by that conviction not really by any reports or any complaints of the women subsequently."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health confirmed they had been served legal papers.
 

Dover MP Gwyn Prosser is to challenge the closure decision of wards used by the elderly at Dover's Buckland Hospital.

They are set to close by the end of October, despite a campaign to keep them open.

Mr Prosser said a public consultation about the future of the hospital, during which 12,000 people signed a petition to keep it open, had been a sham.

"Yes, people said they wanted improvements to their services, but they said they wanted to be looked after within the present Buckland Hospital," he said.

"I am going to ask Kent County Council health scrutiny committee to look again at these decisions."

In the report by Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust (PCT) it said the buildings, which are over 100 years old, are no longer "fit for purpose".

The future of other services is also in doubt, but the PCT said they would remain open in the short term.

PCT spokeswoman Dr Amanda Harrison said it was providing better care for people in Dover, particularly the elderly.

"Care for people to stop them going into hospital in the first place and where they need a little bit of extra help when they leave hospital is best provided out of a hospital setting," she said.

She said she could not see a long-term future for Buckland Hospital because health care had moved on.

Dear Editor,

Re: Rules concerning Mobile Phones in Hospitals

Mr Jones must tell us how much revenue EKHT gains from payphones and other premium services sold to patients within the hospitals.

Kevin

Extract from a response letter dated 04 May 2007 from:

Howard Jones East Kent Hospitals Trust Director of Facilities
William Harvey Hospital
Willesborough
Ashford Kent TN24 0LZ
to
Mrs Maureen Moore ChairmanEast Kent Hospitals Patient and Public Involvement Forum
Kent and Medway Networks Ltd.,
Unit 24 Folkestone Enterprise Centre
Shearway Road
Folkestone Kent CT19 4RH

“MOBILE PHONES

There was advice from the Department of Health which suggested that the use of mobile phones is not the issue it once was. We are certainly relaxed about them being used in public spaces around the hospitals but our policy is that they are not used in ward areas for the following reasons:

• They may interfere with sensitive electronic equipment but are more likely to cause annoyance to patients through the ring tones employed

• The inbuilt cameras, in many phones, could compromise patient privacy and dignity.

There is also a ban in areas such as ITU, NICU and SCBU and near the Theatre areas as the electronic equipment here is both more complex and critical in nature.

I hope this provides the reassurance you were seeking.

Yours sincerely

Howard Jones
Director of Facilities”

A Patient and Public Involvement Forum is being held at St Andrew's United Reformed Church (URC), Watling Street, Canterbury, CT1 2UA from 6.30 pm until 8.30 pm

Presentation by Irene Hayward, Head of Healthcare Transport, East Kent Hospital NHS Trust, together with a Questions and Answers session.

Members of the Public warmly invited to attend and participate.

Forthcoming dates and venues are:

Wednesday, 20th June, 2007 at
St Andrew's United Reformed Church (URC),
Watling Street, Canterbury, CT1 2UA
from 2.00 pm until 4.00 pm

Provisional Presentation by Mr Howard Jones, Director of Facilities, William Harvey Hospital, Ashford, Kent