A new website was opened yesterday giving a wealth of information about the current review of Maternity & Children’s services at Epsom & St Helier Hospitals. Contents include details of:

• The background to the review;
• The ‘case for change’;
• How the project is being run and who is doing it;
• The latest options for the future of the services;
• How they are engaging with the public;
• Presentations and notes from meetings with stakeholders and staff;
• Agenda and minutes for the review’s Project Board and Project Team;
• Press releases and other breaking news.

Visitors are asked to comment on the options and/or put forward other ideas. It can be accessed at http://review.surreyhealth.nhs.uk/Women&Children’s/

At yesterday’s Surrey Health Scrutiny meeting we heard good news about progress at the hospital - no not Epsom, unfortunately, this was the East Surrey hospital in Redhill:

• Waiting times in A&E within target for the last 3 months (a couple of years ago there were reports of ambulances queueing outside).
• 2 out of 3 targets for reducing “referral to treatment” waiting times met.
• Targets for reducing MRSA infections met.
• Finances back in order (they had been overspending for years).
• Plans to pay off their debts within 3 years (instead of 25).

“How was it done?”, we asked. “Identify the cause of the problem, then take action to solve it”, they said. If it was that easy, why has it taken so many years - and why do so many other hospitals seem to have problems?

We were also updated on reducing MRSA and C. Diff (another anti-biotic resistant infection) in Surrey hospitals, this time emphasising that there are far more cases of C. Diff. and with data included from Epsom & St Helier, which covers more than 20% of the county. Overall there is an improvement, but St Helier remains bad.

The Committee was also very critical about an apparent lack of urgency in the County Council who are supposed to be finding a support organisation for the new “LINks” that were supposed to take over the work that the PPIFs (Patient and Public Involvement Forums) were doing, until they were abolished in April. They hope to have it sorted in good time for Christmas.