Urology services to merge in Wolverhampton and Walsall

Members of City of Wolverhampton Council’s health scrutiny board heard how the teams at New Cross and Manor hospitals will come together to form a team of 14 consultants and 10 specialist nurses.

Under the proposal, emergency cases and some elective inpatient care from both areas will be carried out at Wolverhampton’s New Cross.

But day care cases for lesser conditions will move to Walsall Manor instead of being treated in Wolverhampton or Cannock as has been the case for years.

NHS bosses in Wolverhampton said it is believed this will help free up capacity at New Cross and cut the number of people waiting for services.

Data presented to the board showed 481 people in the city with minor conditions have waited more than a year for urology services.

Other statistics showed the time people wait for surgery in Wolverhampton is 18 weeks compared with Dudley, which stands at 11 weeks.

Mike Sharon, from Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, said: “The trusts face different challenges. Walsall has a small department and has challenges making its staffing work to provide safe 24-hour care.

“Wolverhampton has a larger department but we struggle with demand and waiting lists.

“By coming together we definitely see opportunities to make better use of the consultant and clinical workforce generally we have, and to achieve better and quicker services for patients.

“We do realise there is significant concern about patient access and travel times.”

Pete Cook, who is the clinical lead for urology at New Cross, will head up the merged team.

He said: “We are the largest urology unit in the whole of the Black Country.

“We have developed a number of very specialist cancer services over the last 10 years which have amongst the very best outcomes in the entire country.

“Unfortunately as the specialist services have grown they have attracted yet more work and consequently we have found it difficult increasing our capacity to keep up with the demand that has been generated.

“While our waiting lists have been acceptable and we were managing reasonably well until 18 months ago, the lockdown had a knock-on impact that has been enormous.

“We have this large pool of patients with minor conditions and most of these are patients who have surgery performed as a day case and low complexity surgery.

“The proposal is to have one urology service across both trusts and will give us one service and one clinical lead – myself – and one management team running it over two sites.

“It is not simply moving the location. By merging, we will have a bigger and more sustainable team that becomes more attractive for success planning and recruitment of high quality candidates, nursing staff, trainees etc in the future.

“By merging emergency rotas, we will have a bigger team and each consultant will spend more time doing elective work than emergency work. We will spend more time operating and doing diagnostic procedures.

“We calculate this change will equate to 400 more operations every year and approximately 1,200 more out-patient procedures and appointments at New Cross.”

Patient engagement exercises drew mostly positive reactions in Walsall, although only 36 per cent were in favour in Wolverhampton.

Concerns were raised around transport issues, continuity of care and fears the standard of service at Walsall would be poorer in light of a recent negative Care Quality Commission report.

But David Loughton, chief executive of Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and interim boss at Walsall said: “This is what I faced in 2014 when we acquired Cannock from Mid-Staffordshire, whose reputation had more than been tarnished.

“I think you’ve got to look at the service that has been provided at Cannock, of which there have been no complaints about.

“I wouldn’t have any concerns about CQC ratings between different organisations.

“You’ve got to look at what happens in different specialities and certainly Walsall’s poor CQC report was fundamentally to do with medicine and emergencies and nothing to do with urology at all.”

He added that a review of hospital transport for patients will also be carried out.