Have Your Say about Stroke Unit's Move to Charing Cross
NHS Trust extends deadline for comments till July 22
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Charing Cross Hospital is asking patients, carers, local residents and other stakeholders about proposals to bring inpatient stroke services together at Charing Cross Hospital later this year.
The deadline for comments has been extended until next Wednesday, July 22.
The trust says the move, which will be for around five years while St Mary's Hospital in Paddington is redeveloped is in order to improve care quality and outcomes as soon as possible.
The trust says: " We want to deliver the best outcomes and experience for all our stroke patients. The proposed changes would improve the service to meet the best practice standards, enabling patients to have the fullest and speediest recovery possible.
" We believe there are significant benefits in creating a fully integrated service on one site in terms of seven-day access to senior specialist clinicians, therapists and MRI scanning services.
" There is a strong clinical consensus within the Trust that providing stroke services across two hospital sites is not sustainable in terms of quality or efficiency.
" This change will be for an approximately five year period, during which time the St Mary’s Hospital site would be redeveloped and modernised so that the whole integrated stroke service could be re-located there in new facilities, as set out in the Trust’s clinical strategy published in July 2014."
The trust says in the longer term, the plan is for all stroke services to be co-located on a re-developed St Mary’s site.
Currently, Imperial operates a 20-bed stroke unit at Charing Cross Hospital and a 14-bed stroke unit at St Mary’s Hospital, as well as a 20-bed hyper acute stroke unit, or HASU at Charing Cross. The HASU is one of eight in London, and provides initial investigation, treatment and care immediately following a stroke.
Patients then transfer to their local stroke unit for further care and rehabilitation.
Under the Trust’s proposals, the total number of stroke inpatient beds and staff would remain unchanged. Outpatient follow-up care would also continue to be provided at St Mary’s Hospital as well as at Charing Cross Hospital.
The trust's proposal document outlines and explains the proposed co-location plans in more detail. It welcomes welcome any views, comments and questions, which should be sent to trust.communications@imperial.nhs.uk by July 22 and says all feedback will be carefully reviewed and considered.
July 15, 2015
