Decision due on hospitals A&E shake-up

A decision on the controversial plan to combine adult and children's A&E services for Southport and Ormskirk Hospitals is expected later.

Currently adults are treated at Southport and Formby District General Hospital, while the children's A&E is based in Ormskirk and District General Hospital.

Health bosses announced last year that it would be safer for both to be treated on just one site.

A public consultation came down on the side of Ormskirk, but health bosses have always given their preferred option as Southport.

Until 2003, both sites had adult and children's A&E services.

The then government split them after deciding it would be safer for each site to specialise.

But for many years people in charge of healthcare locally have been unhappy about services being split between two sites, ten miles apart along narrow rural roads.

A lack of staff has already led to the children's A&E being closed between midnight and 08:00 since 2020.

Bosses say the new arrangement would allow a round-the-clock service.

But ever since it was announced in the summer of 2024 the proposal has been controversial.

Last summer the board making the decision announced its preference was for services to move to Southport and Formby District General but bosses at the time stressed that the decision was not a "done deal".

Many of those supporting the move to Ormskirk District General Hospital questioned the point of the consultation.

They also challenged the calculations used to claim that the move to Southport would be cheaper.

The plan said that, for safety reasons, other services would also have to move as well.

Transferring Southport's emergency department to Ormskirk would mean moving seven other services - general medicine, critical care, elderly medicine, respiratory medicine, medical gastroenterology, urgent diagnostic haematology and biochemistry and liaison psychiatry.

Ten other services "may be affected", bosses said.

The cost for this has been given as £91m.

By contrast, the plan said, the children's A&E could transfer from Ormskirk to Southport with just one other service, paediatric inpatient care. at just over a third of the cost - £33m.

It would also take two years less to carry out.

But Ormskirk also runs the maternity service for the area.

If these changes go ahead, it would be on a different site from paediatric inpatient and both A&Es.

Women giving birth without the back up of an emergency department is the main reason being given for proposals to reduce maternity services at the nearby Liverpool Women's Hospital, but the potential costs of moving maternity and other paediatric services have not been included in these proposals on A&E.

A three-month consultation attracted more than 5,000 responses.

The independent report evaluating them concluded: "Across nearly all questions, the Ormskirk option is viewed more positively by the overall respondent population."

Of the clinical staff who responded, 40% supported both A&Es in Southport while 49% were against.

By contrast 49% supported the Ormskirk option while 32% were against.

But proportionally far more people from Ormskirk and Skelmersdale responded than people from Southport.

Because of this, the organisation compiling the final report, the Centre for Health Communication Research, also carried out a telephone poll of 507 residents across both areas.

This poll favoured moving both services to Southport Hospital, with 40% in favour.

Just 35% of those polled by phone wanted both A&Es both to be based in Ormskirk.

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