The following is an extract from Mr Bellringer's latest update on his website.
"Mr Bellringer has now left Charing Cross Hospital (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust). The reasons for this are complex, but the failure of the management to come up with any credible plan for capacity and succession planning was central. Imperial have now arranged for patients to be able to transfer to Parkside Hospital for surgery. Patients who were either waiting for surgery on lists which would previously have been at Charing Cross under Mr. Bellringer, and patients booked into clinics to see Mr. Bellringer, should have been contacted to ask whether they wish to stay with Charing Cross, with inevitable delay before treatment, or transfer to Parkside. If you are "on the books" at Charing Cross, and wish to transfer to Parkside, please email. Your email will be passed on to the management at Charing Cross, and it is to be hoped that your wish will be granted. Please be aware that, although they are sitting on a waiting list of over 400 fully funded patients (enough work for 3 years at their current and projected capacity, even if no new patients come forward), and are receiving referrals at a rate of over 30 per month (with a maximum capacity to do fewer than half that number of operations), the management of Charing Cross have been very reluctant to pass any patients over. Indeed, one patient whose referring Clinician wrote asking that she come to Parkside for operation was called and offered an earlier date at Charing Cross. Some patients who have spoken to the management at Charing Cross have been met with a blank refusal to have their care transferred, accompanied by the statement that "I do not have the authority to do this" (to which the question; if you don't, who does??? It is basically untrue!) So far, as of 6.6.14 (more than four months after Mr. Bellringer resigned) only 16 patients had been passed over to the service at Parkside. If Mr. Bellringer had not left, 19 operations were scheduled in May alone at Charing Cross; in the event 5 actually took place. The reduction in clinic slots to see new patients from 7 to 2 per week is also beginning to have an effect. Patients are currently being given dates for surgery in October (delayed from May) at Charing Cross, when the capacity exists to treat them at Parkside in July/August. The effect is that waiting times from clinic to operation, which were already excessive at 7 months, are now over a year, and increasing rapidly. If you feel that your request to transfer has not been appropriately processed, you should contact your MP, and complain to NHS London (if you email, we can send you details of whom you might contact). If you have been referred to Charing Cross, and are waiting, you may feel that a wait of at least a year (probably) for a clinic appointment, then another year from clinic appointment to operation is unreasonable. Mr. Bellringer would agree. Getting a referral to the Charing Cross surgical "service" at the moment is frankly like being dropped into a black hole. Unfortunately, the contractual arrangement currently in place between NHS London (who act on behalf of NHS England in this respect) and Charing Cross prevents direct access to the Parkside service, other than for private patients. It is hoped that NHS England will review this matter urgently, and writing to your MP can only accelerate this process."
Not good times if you are waiting for SRS on the NHS in the UK.
