One of Worcestershire's two 24-hour minor injuries units to close overnight

The unit at Tenbury Community Hospital is to close between 9pm and 9am seven days a week after Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, which runs the county’s MIUs, reported it had been repeatedly unable to recruit enough Emergency Nurse Practitioners to staff the facility overnight.

Under Royal College of Emergency Medicine rules all MIUs must be staffed by at least one Emergency Nurse Practitioner at all times, but despite advertising the role eight times over the past two years the trust has been unable to fill the posts and had instead found itself forced to rely upon expensive agency staff, which could cost up to £1,000 per shift.

Although the plans will leave the county with only one 24-hour MIU at Kidderminster Hospital, a report presented to members of Worcestershire County Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, January 21 showed the unit saw an average of only six patients a day – compared with between 22 and 27 at the units in Malvern, Evesham – and often none at all during the night.

Speaking at the meeting South Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Group’s director of strategy David Mehaffey said he understood there would be concerns about the impact on patients and people living in the area, but did believe it was a reasonable way forward.

“I didn’t join the NHS to see services reduced, but it is reasonable that we have to do this,” he said.

“If it’s not this the Health and Care Trust will have to look elsewhere to save costs.”

Members heard between April 2013 and December 2014 there had been 316 days in which no patients at all had visited between 9pm and 9am, and the majority of these did so between 8am and 9am, meaning Emergency Nurse Practitioners working at the unit may have found themselves unable to carry out the number of procedures needed to maintain their accreditation.

But ward member for the town Cllr Ken Pollock said he was not comfortable with the decision, saying he did not understand why Emergency Nurse Practitioners working elsewhere in the trust could not be required to work in Tenbury on a rota basis.

“There is such a thing as employing people to do a job and telling them to do it,” he said.

Calling the idea “backwards” he said he was concerned people living in the rural, isolated town would suffer as a result of the change.

“Thirty per cent of people in A&E don’t need to be there,” he said. “We are telling them to go elsewhere but no we are going to close it.”

The committee’s chairman Cllr Andrew Roberts said he understood the position was not an ideal one.

“If we just took a straw poll people don’t want to reduce services but we need to take a cold, professional view,” he said.

“There no good finish to this.”

“We would all like more local services.”

The unit will remain open 24 hours a day for the time being and it is not yet known when the new opening hours will come into force.

PANEL: Tenbury resident hits out at plans to close unit overnight

A TENBURY resident who relied upon the town’s Minor Injury Unit when a neighbour seriously hurt himself has expressed serious concerns about plans to close it overnight.

Wally Rogers told your Worcester News an elderly neighbour had come to him for help just after midnight about a year after he knocked a scab off his leg.

Mr Rogers said it quickly became clear the man was bleeding severely and put him into his car to take him to the Minor Injury Unit.

“Before we got there he was unconscious,” he said.

“The nurse immediately came out and worked on him in my car – I’ve never seen anyone work like her. She was a real angel.

“Unfortunately he never woke up, but if I had called for an ambulance he would have died right there in my garden rather than in my car.”

Although efforts to save the man were ultimately unsuccessful, Mr Rogers said having the unit in the town was an important source of assurance to him and his neighbours.

“Why are they saying go to a community hospital when they want to close ours?,” he said.”

“It’s that one off.

“If you do away with it there will be a time when someone can’t get the care they need."