By Press Release
A wasted opportunity
Dear Editor,
Dr Lesley Stevens can’t have it both ways, (Recommended changes to mental health services, IW Observer, Sept 16). Highlighting inconsistencies in funding and clinical pathways with real challenges, but in the same breath claiming good progress in improving services. Despite St Mary’s once-in-a-lifetime £48 million funding and its multi-million-pound deficit written off at the beginning of the pandemic, it has failed to build anything credible here on the Island and is going cap in hand to the mainland for help.
Let’s look at some of the issues. You attract top people by offering them the opportunity to become part of something exciting. A pioneering new community mental health centre would be a good start. Instead, after three years we have a derelict retail site. Top NHS staff could be offered an enhanced relocation package, as trust executives receive. You could reward staff with decent levels of pay so they can afford to cover the increased costs of living on the Island.
We certainly do not need another executive gravy train in the form of a ‘new’ trust.
We could and should have the Rolls Royce of NHS health services here on the Island. Why haven’t we? Either the problem is low calibre management, or there’s another agenda in play. It is interesting that the trust’s chairman is also chair of Portsmouth University Hospital, and the new CEO spearheads the move towards mainland partnerships. The more health services move to the mainland, the lower St Mary’s running costs and the greater its chance of meeting targets; with the added bonus that when things go wrong the management can blame others.
Will the potential to build something truly special here on the Island be frittered away with the immortal words of the late Jim Bowen echoing in our ears, ‘Have a look at what you could have had’?
Hans Bromwich, Cowes