More than 1,000 people have signed a petition calling for a 24-hour Accident and Emergency department at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr.
The £172m hospital, which opened in November 2011, has a local emergency centre for minor injuries. Campaigners say this is not enough and that Caerphilly County Borough needs its own A&E.
They are also opposed to the South Wales Programme – a hospital shake-up which could see services centralised in four or five hospitals.
Mariam Kamish, from the hospital campaign’s organising committee, said: “People feel very strongly that this is about safety and that the current situation puts lives and people’s long term health at risk.
“We have heard countless very upsetting stories from people who’ve waited for hours at the new hospital, only to be sent down the Royal Gwent, because they can’t be treated on the spot.
“We are going to fight on this until we win. Over 50 people attended the meeting we held at the Twyn Community Centre in Caerphilly on December 11. We voted to organise a march in February and to build the campaign in every area served by Ystrad Fawr Hospital.
“We realise that what is happening to us is part of a bigger picture. We are opposing the South Wales plan to have only four or five A&Es from Llanelli to Chepstow and we supporting all the other campaigns that are fighting for their local hospital services.
“We will be marching with them to the Assembly in April. Together, we will have a big enough voice to make ourselves heard. The NHS belongs to everyone and we need to make politicians listen.”
Campaigners have an online petition and have also distributed physical copies across the area for people to sign in person.
Since opening in November 2011, the new hospital has treated more than 100,000 patients.
Aneurin Bevan Health Board has said that 28,000 people were treated at the hospital’s local emergency centre – a 42% increase on the number of people treated at the old Miners’ hospital, which the new facility replaced.
A public meeting is being held on Tuesday January 15 at 7pm at The Valley Greyhound Stadium Pub, Twyn Road, Ystrad Mynach. For more information, visit the hospital campaign’s Facebook page.
The following is a statement from Aneurin Bevan Health Board.
“We acknowledge the comments of the community, but it is important we do not raise expectations as we simply will not be able to provide the doctors for a full Accident and Emergency Department in Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr.
“The model now in place for Ysbyty Ystard Fawr was subject to a long public consultation, prior to starting the construction of the new hospital.
“This allowed the new hospital to extend the hours available for minor injuries and for those services provided in the Local Emergency Centre.
“For many years, Caerphilly District Miners Hospital did not have the services in place that would support a full-blown A&E service, for example, there was no emergency surgery, critical care or trauma services, mainly because of doctor staffing issues at that time. This also means that the new hospital could never operate as an A&E for the same reasons. This is why a different Local Emergency Care model was agreed publicly during consultation and despite concerns has been successful in:
- Extending hours of opening to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – (the previous Caerphilly District Miners Hospital was only limited hours, Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings).
- Increasing patient throughput by 42% (that is over 8,000 extra patients in its first year).
- Supporting other activities on the site, such as Out of Hours services with GPs and emergency medical admissions through the Medical Assessment Unit which is doctor led.
“What we do have locally is a different model available which has shown that it can treat more patients locally in the Caerphilly area than before using highly experienced and accredited Emergency Nurse Practitioners with Doctor support available on site.
“However, there are doctors available in the hospital and specifically in the Medical Assessment Unit and Out of Hours services have doctors.
“It will be impossible for the hospital to provide doctor-led services for an A&E; there are already doctor vacancies for A&E services locally and significantly across South Wales. We already know that A&E doctors training posts will never be placed at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr.”
As a sufferer, I don't have a massive amount of time for local A and Es. Caerffili was OK for a sprain, but when I had a minor stroke, so minor that I recovered entirely myself, my daughter insisted I went to Cardiff. If the problem is serious, you want first-class treatment, from Cardiff or Newport, and you will find a car – which most of us have by now – to get you there.
I took a stroke victim, by car, to The Royal Gwent. We then spent the next 8 hours in a waiting room. A first class, 24 Hours A & E is required urgently at Ystrad Fawr.
I have gladly signed the petition to this effect but I believe that the plans of 'The South Wales Programme' are pretty much a done deal. There will be only five A & E departments in S. Wales, One each in Newport, Cardiff, Merthyr and Swansea with one further 'in fill department' probably sited around Llantrisant.
I do not agree with these proposals but remain convinced that this is what will happen, regardless of public opposition.
I like many others members of the public expected an accident and emergency unit at the new hospital. If maybe the public was made fully aware there were to be no such facility at the new hospital before building had taken place, the public may not have been so supportive to having the hospital built and the Caerphilly Miners closed. Caerphilly District Miners Hospital may not have had an A&E open 24 hours a day, however many people think it was better then what is currently available at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr. If in the future I or a family member needed treatment, however miner the injury appears, we would not go to Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in case we are told to go to a different hospital and valuable time would be wasted.
many years went into the planning of this hospital £172 million pounds spent on it and if you asked the public to vote on it.it would have been unanimous that the main service needed would be a doctor led state of the art accident & emergency unit,i have visited the hospital quite a few times in it's first year the clinics are fine and appointments times are pretty good keeping to times, but if you take anyone there to a&e the chances are you will be sent elsewhere this is not good enough.
i would like to see an A and E at ystrad mynach hospital. I went to the hospital twice in a week and was told to go to the Gwent Hospital , I may as well have gone to the Gwent in the first place. I feel sorry for the nurses at YM as they give an excellent service. If you need an x-ray at the week-end you cannot as that department is closed so off to the Gwent you go
This is a Cottage Hospital, residents of the area should now understand that, and the local and national politicians, who represent us have no interest whatsoever in improving the Health Care provision at this site beyond that which the Health Authority have commissioned.
The fact is that senior politicians, AM`s PM`s and senior local party leaders, live on the same `Dinner Party` circut as those making these local health decision, and they will not think or act ` out of the box` in respect to public opinion if it differs from their friends and colleagues running the show.
Let`s get it clear, it is the ` responsibility` of our AM Jeff Cuthbert to listen to his electorate and get of his backside and do something which allows the voices of the people he represent to be heard, he and his Assembly Colleagues, have responsibility for health care, and, all its local provisions. So, if those people who feel strongly enough to comment on these pages about this local lack of proper health care in a crisis, wrote to him, perhaps we could get a better impression of where he stands on this issue. It will, without any doubt at all, NOT be in support of upsetting his health authority colleagues by telling them they are not providing for the health care of its local citizens.
I'm don't know who "Arthur" is. But if he's a constituent then he has every right to meet me and discuss his concerns. It's easy to use phrases like "get off his backside" when you're not prepared to give your full name!
I was not able to attend the public meeting held before Christmas (too short notice) but I told the organisers that I would be happy to meet them and discuss the issues. But, as far as I'm aware, no request for a meeting has been made to date.
It's of course necessary for me to know, and work with, senior officials of the Health Board. I have to contact them regularly on behalf of constituents. And I can assure "Arthur" that I've made countless representations on health related matters over the last nine years.
I've just been made aware of the meeting planned for next Tuesday. This is very short notice for me and I doubt if I can make it. But if the organisers want to meet me (as long as they live in the constituency) then they can.
If many years went into the "planning" of this £172 Million Cottage Hospital, it is obviuos that the "Planners" were incompetent, but, of course they will not lose their jobs over the matter, the Labour party were in power during the planning, and now are we to expect that they will expose the guilty parties involved in closing the Miners. As a town caerphilly needs to break away fro the Aneurin Bevan trust and join Cardif and the Vale so we can use the Heath,a twenty minute bus ride away.
I think it would be helpful if Jeff Cuthbert indicated what his position is regarding a hospital with 24 hour A&E within the Caerffili borough. I think this is what 'Arthur' was alluding to.
I think that all constiuents accept that Jeff cannot alone change the views of the Anuerin Bevan Health Board but it would be of assistance if he revealed his own thinking and that of the Labour Party.
My own view is that we should have 24 Hour, doctor led, health care at Ystrad Fawr. It is also my view that this will not happen.
It should not be forgotton that Caerffili Miners Hospital did used to have 24 hour emergency service before down grading many years ago. I was the grateful recipient of 'in patient' care at the miners after a serious head injury. This hospital is sorely missed and the lack of A & E at Ystrad Fawr is, to me, a waste of the excellent diagnostic facilities there.
To the question "would I like to see an A&E in YYF" the answer of course is "yes". But it's a bit like someone being asked if they would like to see full employment and the end of poverty. The real question is what, in practical and achievable terms, is possible for health care in the mid-Rhymney Valley.
The points made by the AB Health Board should be read carefully. They are guided by the relevant Royal Colleges and are designed to provide care in as safe and sustainable manner as possible. That's why there is a move to site specific services at centres that contain enough specialised staff and appropraite (and expensive) equipment.
This doesn't mean that there are not legitimate complaints about hospital provision. I have always had plenty to deal with and that certainly included the Miners.
The A B Health Board needs to do more to explain to local people what can be done at YYF. They also need to look at ways of improving the offer and I believe that they are.
I will continue to deal with issues brought to me by my constituents but I hope that the advice and support that I offer in return will always be based on reality.
Jeff says that asking for a proper hospital, in a borough of more than 70,000 households, is,
"a bit like someone being asked if they would like to see full employment and the end of poverty."
This is not a good analogy, poverty is relative. We can ensure that better distribution of available wealth occurs but we will always have inequality. In fact the proportion of the population who are poor has not changed since medieval times, merely the way in which we measure poverty.
Full employment is another chimera, even in boom times we always have unemployed. These people are between jobs, retraining or have disabilities that make it difficult for them to find work. There are also the lazy, who are content to live off the state and do not think that bettering their financial situation is worth surrendering their leisure time.
A hospital is a different matter, at Ystrad Fawr we have a large building, very well equipped with staff already working there. All that is needed to transform this cottage hospital into a fully functional hospital is the political will to insist on it. Personally I do not think the will is there, the plans are drawn up and will only get a fine tune before implementation; we will have five hospitals in S. Wales, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr and the Llantrisant area.
Where`s there`s a will there`s a way?
Where do these people suggest that they get the specialist emergency doctors and nurses from? If they bothered to do a quick google search they would quickly find that there is already a uk shortage. Dont forget the full range of other specialist teams that would be needed to support A&E – again with severe shortages! Instead of providing more A&Es that can be inappropriately used (another well publicised problem) there needs to be a patient education programme that ensures patients choose wisely and save A&E.
'k.jon. seems to think that people are suggesting more A & E hospitals, I have seen no evidence of this. They simply want a replacement for an A & E that has closed, the Miners.
If there is a national shortage of doctors then it should not be beyond the powers of, reputedly, the fifth largest economy in the world to train more.
I do agree that emergency facilities are misused by some, GPs need to offer a much better service than they have become used to providing in recent years. When younger I had numerous wounds stitched, not one of these sutures were done at a hospital; all were competently done by my GP. Try that today, the receptionist will tell you to go to the Royal Gwent.
As one of `these people` who feel very strongly that the citizens of Caerphilly can demand the best possible of health care be provided for them and their families, I do not accept the defeatist attitude expressed by K.jon.
The people we charge with proving health care, for us, paid for by us, and therefore for our benefit, have a duty of care to do just that, if they fall short of that legal provision they risk the possibility of serious public consequences, we have recently seen examples of that, with tragic consequences for the families involved.
If, on the other hand, all those people, politicians and hospital administrators, and all the apologists for the situation of the absence of local A&E provision in Caerphilly were to admit that this health care provision in Ystrad Mynach was a ` cottage hospital` and nothing else, and was always and originally intended to be so, and, admit that the public in the Caerphilly and Gwent area were `duped` into being sold a very expensive ` pup` the better. Only then can a proper campaign to create a NEW Accident and Emergency unit to provide care in Caerphilly be started, then we would be able to properly judge where politicians and health authority administrators stand on the issue, in the meantime they will continue to make excuse after excuse and give reason after reason why one was never planned for this hospital when it was first conceived. ` These People` deserve better from them all.
please fill in this survey that is on wales online it is just under the article:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2013…
please pass onto your friends.
If there is anything really wrong with you, you want the best doctors, and these are found in Cardiff. Caerffili never had them, neither will Ystrad. Caerffili people should start talking sense. Perhaps I agree with one of our AMs – we have five, not just Jeff Cuthbert – when reference is made to the royal colleges. I suspect this is another way of saying that Ysrad is too small
But it seems that the unit at ystrad mynach offers the same service as the miners did, it was my understanding that the miners didnt have specialist services and that the sickest patients were transferred to the Gwent or the Heath also it was only open 9-5
k.jon the Miners, within my memory, had a 24 hour A & E. No patients were transferred to the Gwent or Heath. The only patients that were moved were severe burns, to Chepstow, and that was only after they had been stabilised at the Miners.
The Ystrad Fawr cottage hospital does not have A&E, not even in 'office hours'. Minor injuries, such as a broken finger, are not treated there but sent away to other hospitals. The health boards have very successfully relied on the short memory of people who think things have always been thus. This sort of thing is happening all over Britain, I have a brother who lives in Crickhowell who's travelling distance to A & E is likely to increase from 4 miles from home to 20 miles.
Personally I think that the people of Caerffili and the Rhymney Valley deserve better. I unfortunately do not think we will get a better service as the die is cast and South Wales will have only 5 proper hospitals.
The colliery worker paid for the Miners Hospital in an effort to provide life saving services and spare casualties of the pits the journey to Cardiff. This forward thinking has now been discarded in favour of a few large hospitals with cottage hospitals as triage units for them.
Well that was not my experience! 1. In 2008ish a family member of mine who was suffering from chest pain was taken to the gwent (although in caerphilly shopping) as the ambulance man said that the miners dealt with 'minor problems' only. 2. Again, I know of at least two people of have had their broken wrist and ankles treated (without being sent away) and who were exteremley happy with the service.
I have not long moved back to the area full time after living away, I think we are lucky to be able to access 3 full A&E's within a short car ride and an even shorter ambulance ride if needed!