Joan Ryan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Joan Ryan on 2016-06-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what contingency plans his Department has for the event of the closure of North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust’s emergency department.

Ben Gummer

NHS England is the responsible organisation for emergency planning and resilience in London. As such, it has well-established contingency plans in place which take effect in the event of emergency departments (EDs) having to temporarily reduce their scope of operations in order to ensure the best standards of patient care, our central concern.

As the Rt. hon. Member is aware, following an unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) at North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust, the CQC issued a Warning Notice. The Warning Notice, published on 6 June 2016, requires the trust to significantly improve the treatment of patients attending its emergency department.

The CQC is responsible for assessing whether the Trust is providing the right standard of care and ensuring that improvement plans meet the level of improvement required.

NHS Improvement is working alongside NHS England and the local health and care system to ensure that the Trust has the resources it needs to ensure that patients receive safe, high quality care.

We are informed by NHS Improvement that, in order to address the poor performance at the Trust’s ED, it has devised a plan titled Safer, Faster, Better. This is a whole system programme with the primary objective of improving performance, patient experience and outcomes for patients.