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Skin services to be cut from hospital

by Alice McKeegan
4/10/2008

HOSPITAL bosses will stop providing dermatology services from next year.

Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Rochdale Infirmary, confirmed that it has given six months’ notice to primary care trusts to end its contract to treat dermatology from April.

A spokesman said that the decision was taken after problems developed following the retirement of a doctor.

A number of patients complained that this had led to increased waiting times and clinics being cancelled.

The trust is now in talks with NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale to discuss the future of dermatology provisions, but said that any changes would not negatively affect patients.

Now, it is hoped that primary care trusts will be able to develop a new service which will be ‘delivered from premises closer to patients’ homes’.

A spokesman for Pennine Acute said: "With a single exception, the doctors providing this service are not employed by our trust, but by Hope Hospital, which is the regional specialist centre.

"We have had a number of complaints from patients and it is not fair to them to prolong this current situation by continuing to use this model of service.

"The lack of provision of consultants also means that we believe that we can only take urgent skin cancer referrals.

"Because of this, we have told the primary care trusts and Hope that we wish the current arrangements to end on 1 April 2009.

"We now intend to develop the model so we will be in a position by next April to resume normal service, but in a better and more robust way."

He added that urgent referrals for suspected cancer cases from GPs would be unaffected by the changes.

A spokeswoman for NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale added: "We have been made aware of potential capacity issues for routine dermatology appointments and we are actively addressing this with the hospital authorities."


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Most recent 2 of 2 user comments

   Rochdale were unable to offer me an appointment so my GP referred me all the way to Burnley! I had my first appointment there 2 weeks ago and then they referred me to Blackburn for further testing! In November, I have to go 3 times in one week for tests and at the moment I do not know how I will even get there. Its madness.
JohnB, Manchester
7/10/2008 at 23:25
   Well this certainly explains why the Infirmary where unable to give me my next appointment which is due in November. Is it not bad enough that the nearest inpatient for dermatology is Hope as they shut the ward at Crumpsall it now looks like we are going to have comprimised out patient service now as well. Great going Rochdale!
Deeplish Lass,
4/10/2008 at 21:37
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