HOSPITAL CAMPAIGN: £2m: the cost of ripping heart out of St Richard's Hospital
At least £2m has been swallowed up by the Fit for the Future health fiasco in West Sussex.
And there was a warning this week that the final total could run into millions more.
The 2m figure was disclosed by a senior county councillor serving on the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, as condemnation continues to grow of proposals put forward by the West Sussex Primary Care Trust, which are now being considered by the secretary of state for health.
The massive scale of the price-tag for an exercise which has resulted in decisions widely regarded as disastrous, including the downgrading of St Richard's Hospital, will shock many people.
Most would almost certainly prefer to have seen it spent on healthcare instead.
Chichester MP Andrew Tyrie said the total would undoubtedly be much higher than 2m.
"I don't know what the cost is, but I am absolutely confident that it will run into millions," he added. "This is a fiasco of regional and national proportions."
Mr Tyrie said the level of mismanagement in the exercise had been 'unacceptably high'.
"I am in favour of auditing the way we go about our healthcare, but one has to ask whether this whole process has been worth the candle," he declared.
County councillor James Walsh said he recalled being given a cost figure of in the region of 1m at a JHOSC meeting some months ago.
"Many of us then thought that to be conservative, and with all the other indirect costs of professional time would probably push it nearer 2m," he added.
"It has been an incredibly wasteful exercise – over one year long, initially premised on financial bases, and then shifting to supposedly clinical grounds."
Cllr Walsh, a medical doctor, added: "The consultation has skillfully avoided detailed clinical input from the actual front-line practitioners in West Sussex, and turned to hand-picked yes-men to give a clinical respectability veneer, easily stripped off.
"Nobody was going to argue about creating a 'super hospital' in West Sussex at either Worthing or St Richard's.
"But it should not have been at the expense of severely degrading services at the other two."
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