{"id":327368,"date":"2026-03-13T07:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327368\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T07:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:44:08","slug":"decision-due-on-ae-shake-up-at-southport-and-ormskirk-hospitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327368\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision due on A&#038;E shake-up at Southport and Ormskirk hospitals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Transferring Southport&#8217;s emergency department to Ormskirk would mean moving seven other services &#8211; general medicine, critical care, elderly medicine, respiratory medicine, medical gastroenterology, urgent diagnostic haematology and biochemistry and liaison psychiatry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ten other services &#8220;may be affected&#8221;, bosses said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The cost for this has been given as \u00a391m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">By contrast, the plan said, the children&#8217;s A&amp;E could transfer from Ormskirk to Southport with just one other service, paediatric inpatient care. at just over a third of the cost &#8211; \u00a333m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It would also take two years less to carry out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Ormskirk also runs the maternity service for the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If these changes go ahead, it would be on a different site from paediatric inpatient and both A&amp;Es.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Women giving birth without the back up of an emergency department is the main reason being given for proposals to reduce maternity services at the nearby Liverpool Women&#8217;s Hospital, but the potential costs of moving maternity and other paediatric services have not been included in these proposals on A&amp;E.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A three-month consultation attracted more than 5,000 responses.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The independent report evaluating them concluded: &#8220;Across nearly all questions, the Ormskirk option is viewed more positively by the overall respondent population.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Of the clinical staff who responded, 40% supported both A&amp;Es in Southport while 49% were against.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">By contrast 49% supported the Ormskirk option while 32% were against.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But proportionally far more people from Ormskirk and Skelmersdale responded than people from Southport.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Because of this, the organisation compiling the final report, the Centre for Health Communication Research, also carried out a telephone poll of 507 residents across both areas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This poll favoured moving both services to Southport Hospital, with 40% in favour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Just 35% of those polled by phone wanted both A&amp;Es both to be based in Ormskirk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Transferring Southport&#8217;s emergency department to Ormskirk would mean moving seven other services &#8211; general medicine, critical care, elderly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-327368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}