crisis-hit University College and Middlesex Hospitals have still not decided what closures to carry through to bridge a massive £14m spending gap.
A tom package of cuts including the closure elizabeth Anderson Hospital for women has already trig. gered an angry reaction from neith unions and local campaigners. ( But a special meeting of Bloomsbury & Islington health authority on June 19 failed to Saturday July 4th 1pm Outside the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital Euston Road, London NW1 (nearest tube Euston) Page 14 June 27, 1992 No. 24 resolve the issue of the missing €14m, even while managers publicly admitted that either the UCH or the Middlesex would probably have to close.
The Bloomsbury crisis is only part of a wave of cash problems hat has triggered a new spate of closures across London.
Even before the secretive inquiry under Sir Bernard Tominson produces its recommendations later this year, eight other London hospitals, several of them national centres of excellence, comprising over 1,500 beds, face the imminent threat of closure.
In addition, major develop ment schemes - including the promised reprovision of a children's hospital -- have beer stapoca as une capital's nealth service falls victim to the Tory internal market.
A London Heaith Emergency survey of plans adopted by realth authorities and opting out Trusts in London shows that hospitals on the danger list • ATKINSON MORLEY'S Hospital (Wandsworth DHA, 135 beds), the biggest specialist neurosurgery unit in England he south of ringland. Thore of serving the whole of George's Hospital opt-out apolication is approved, Atkinson Morley's would be closed and transferred from its 31-acre site to share a small building on the overcrowded St George's site.
QUEEN MARY'S HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN, Carshalton (100 beds). Another world-famous hospital threatened by the asset-stripping St Helier Trust, which calls the closure of Queen Mary's, but no funding is available to build promised replace ment facilities on the cramped St Helier site.
• The BROOK Hospital, in Greenwich DHA (500 beds). Regional plans to rationalise specialist neuroscienceservices would remove this from the Brook and transfer resources to King's College Hospital, while opting-out Greenwich Healthcare rust proposes to close its Accident and Emergency services • DULWICH Hospital,(256 beds) threatened with by the centralisation plans of the King's Healthcare Trust, Whose opt- out application na. been provisionally agreed but frozen until 1993 • RUSH GREEN Hospital (Barking lavering Srentwood), (190 beds) whose closure by 1995 the centrepiece of an acute services pt-out application of the Havering • ST ANDREWS Hospital, Newham, (297 beds). The Newham opt-out application spells out plans to centralise all acute services on the Newham General Hospital site, leaving St Andrews ready for closure.
The SAMARITAN (47beds) and WESTERN OPH.
THALMIC (30beds) Hospitals in Parkside, whose closure is included in the prospectus of the St Mary's Trust, another opt out that has been frozen until next April.
Already cancelled is the axed SYDENHAM CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, which has fallen victim to the reduced capital plan of the Guy's-Lewisham Trust. Instead, paediatric services will remain wards on the Lewisham Hospital site.
condon reaim Emergenci has branded the closures as a full- blooded asset-stripping The result will be fewer beds, forcing patients to wait longer or travel further for treatment.
Many of these closures are being smuggled through in the application documents of would-be Trusts, who hope to avoid any proper public consultation. Nothing could more clearly show that Trusts and the internal market mean closures in London.'
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