As many of you will be aware, at the beginning of this month it was announced that the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) would be investigated by Monitor, the regulator for health services in England, to examine the ongoing financial difficulties the Hospital continues to experience.
Since the King’s Trust took over the running of the PRUH in October 2013, significant investment has gone into the Hospital. An additional 260 ward nurses have been recruited to increase the nurse:patient ratio, more consultants, doctors and midwives have been taken on, and new equipment, including an MRI scanner, has been purchased.
The Hospital had seemed to be moving in the right direction: its Hyper-Acute Stroke Unit has improved its rating from ‘D’ to ‘A’, making it one on the top twenty services in the country; complaints have fallen by over half; and the PRUH’s Friends and Family scores are recording 93 per cent favourability. It has, nonetheless, become clear that the significant financial and clinical challenges King’s inherited from the South London Healthcare NHS Trust (SLHT) – which between 2009 and 2012 generated a deficit of £153 million over three hospitals – remain a problem.
This is incredibly disappointing news, and I have co-signed a letter Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham, has sent to the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, asking for a full explanation of what can be done to rectify the problems at the PRUH as swiftly as possible. I have attached a copy of the letter at the bottom of this page.
There was also a debate in the Commons yesterday afternoon about the investigation, which both Bob Stewart and myself contributed to. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of Health, Jane Ellison, set out clearly why this investigation has been called and what it will involve, and I have copied a link to the transcript of the debate below:
Going forward, I hope to meet with Lord Bob Kerslake, the new chair of the King’s Trust, in the very near future. Your local Conservative team in Bromley and Chislehurst, as well as in neighbouring constituencies, will continue to work with all those involved, and we are committed to addressing the root causes of the PRUH’s problems as a matter of priority. I will, of course, post any updates on my website as and when they become available, but please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries or concerns in the meantime.