Teignmouth Hospital closure: another review?

Could it be saved?

Another review into the planned closure of Teignmouth Hospital is a step closer.

The community hospital on Mill Lane, the first to be built by the NHS in 1954, is due to close, with services moving to Dawlish Hospital and a new £8 million health centre in Teignmouth town centre.

It forms part of a health service plan to modernise health and care services in the area, agreed in 2020, with a focus on “community-based intermediate care.”

Devon’s health scrutiny committee has now agreed to investigate the possible impacts of the NHS proposals, before deciding whether to refer them back to the health secretary for a second time.

The first time was in 2021 because the committee was unhappy with a lack of consultation over the hospital’s future.

The then health secretary Sajid Javid asked for a review by a panel of independent experts called the IRP. They decided the NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) consultation had been “adequate,”

However, the IRP said there were “lessons to be learned for both parties,” adding the NHS must engage with the community to “determine the future” of the hospital.

A campaign to save it has continued, with Teignbridge District Council last month unanimously voting to support the hospital’s plight and agreeing to write to current health secretary Steve Barclay to review the closure again.

Councillors claim there is much more pressure on the health system since the original decision, made before the pandemic, while the League of Friends of Teignmouth Hospital has pledged £1 million to refurbish it as a recovery hospital.

The NHS says its plan was supported by more than 60 per cent of people in a 2020 consultation, which attracted over 1,000 responses. It adds: “Our model of providing care gives us more capacity than a rehabilitation ward would.”

But at a meeting of the county council scrutiny committee on Tuesday [21 March], several speakers and councillors urged it to ask the government for another review.

Local resident Vivian Wilson said: “It’s 21 years since the closure of one of the two wards at Teignmouth Hospital. It is six years since the other one was closed. The loss of those two wards is now a primary cause of bed-blocking at Torbay.

“Prior to that, Teignmouth Hospital was the perfect pit-stop for patients between Torbay Hospital and home.”

Ms Wilson mentioned specific cases of what she claimed to be “poor aftercare” as a result, later adding: “This is why we’ve been fighting to save Teignmouth Hospital – a valued outpost to Torbay since 1954 and it should be again.”

Committee member Martin Wrigley (Lib Dem, Dawlish) believes the “fundamental situation on the ground has changed.”

He said: “We currently have plans for a health and wellbeing centre that is – by all accounts – insufficiently large to house the required services. We only have some of the GPs in the town agreeing to move into that centre, and we have had a massive change in the world … we have had a pandemic.”

Cllr Wrigley continued: “It looks to me – and from everything we hear and from all the evidence that these good people have gathered over the years – that what is currently proposed in Teignmouth is not in the best interests of the health of the area’s residents.”

Teignmouth councillor David Cox (Lib Dem) added: “We now have got commitment from the League of Friends of Teignmouth Hospital that they have a million pounds they are prepared to spend to keep Teignmouth Hospital open, so we are looking at the possibility of the extra money coming in from the community as well.

“I’m not against the NHS’s modus operandi, but 30 per cent of people are stuck in Torbay who could be sent home but can’t be sent home because there is nowhere for them to go. They need a halfway house which is Teignmouth Hospital.”

The committee was told it could make another referral on the grounds that the closure is “not in the interests of the health service.”

It agreed to set up a task group to gather evidence ahead of the next meeting in June, where a final decision will be made on whether to refer the closure to ministers again.

Following the meeting, a spokesperson for the NHS in Devon said: “The way we provide care in the Teignmouth and Dawlish area is very successful and receives very positive feedback from patients and carers.

“Our model of providing care gives us more capacity than a rehabilitation ward would – when we consulted with local people in 2020, we estimated that we could treat four times as many people in their own homes as we could in a rehabilitation ward in Teignmouth Hospital with the same investment.”