Health News: Maternity services - Super clinics to fill capital care gap
Asha Goveas
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Children's centres should be located alongside a new breed of clinics set to house many of London's maternity services, according to one of the authors of a 10-year blueprint for the future of the NHS in the capital.
The consultation, by newly-appointed health minister Professor AraDarzi, sets out plans to create a network of 150 "super clinics",providing a complete range of services for up to half of the capital'shospital outpatients by 2017.
Darzi, also tasked with conducting a nationwide review of the state ofthe NHS, said: "Londoners face a stark divide between primary andhospital care and we believe these clinics will fill that gap."
Known as "polyclinics", they will have extended opening times andprovide a number of key adult services, including most GP care, urgentcare, social care, community mental health and healthy livingservices.
The review says they will provide the ideal location for midwives andcould also house community paediatric and child mental healthservices.
Professor Cathy Warwick, chair of the review's working group onmaternity services, said the move will make services more accessible towomen: "At the moment most maternity services, even those in thecommunity, are based in acute services so this is a very significantshift."
By co-locating services in a polyclinic, new mums would also be able toeasily access other services, for example mental health services to helpthem cope with postnatal depression, she said.
Warwick, also director of midwifery at King's College Hospital NHSTrust, added the shift to providing midwifery services in the communitywill also mean children's centres could house them. She added: "Wherepolyclinics and children's centres aren't co-located, we need to ensurenetworking between the two is encouraged."
Darzi has made clear he intends to concentrate specialist services infewer hospitals and that local district general hospitals will no longerprovide the same range of services.
Mary Newburn, head of policy research at the National Childbirth Trust'said she was concerned about concentrating obstetric services in asmaller number of large hospitals.
This would mean women would have to travel further and reduce access formore vulnerable families who may not have a car and who do not speakEnglish as a first language.
- www.healthcareforlondon.nhs.uk/framework_for_action.asp.
