Healthcare in the North

People in Ramsey and the North need confidence that the health and care services they rely on have a secure future.

After months of uncertainty around Ramsey and District Cottage Hospital, the commitments from Manx Care and the Department of Health and Social Care to retain the hospital and restore services are welcome.

The important thing now is delivery.

Recent events showed how quickly public confidence can be damaged when plans change, communication is poor and people are left uncertain about services they depend on. We cannot allow ourselves to drift back into the same position a few years from now.

A meaningful future for Ramsey Cottage Hospital

I believe Ramsey and District Cottage Hospital must continue to have a meaningful clinical role serving the North.

That does not mean trying to duplicate every specialist service provided at Noble’s. Noble’s will remain the Island’s main acute hospital. But concentrating more and more healthcare on one site is not automatically the best way to provide an efficient or resilient health service.

An Island health service that becomes increasingly dependent on one hospital site creates an obvious point of vulnerability. Ramsey cannot replace Noble’s, but retaining useful clinical capacity in the North provides care closer to home, additional capacity and greater resilience for the whole Island.

I will hold Manx Care and DHSC to the commitments already made on restoring services.

I am not arguing that every service currently provided at Ramsey must remain there forever. Healthcare changes and services will sometimes need to change with it. But moving a service simply because it can also be provided at Noble’s is not enough.

Decisions need to take account of access for patients, pressure and capacity elsewhere in the health service, the resilience of the Island as a whole and the need to retain meaningful clinical provision in the North.

Keeping the hospital open means little if its clinical role is gradually stripped away.

Replacing Cummal Mooar

The North also needs a modern replacement for Cummal Mooar.

A replacement was approved as far back as 2018. Eight years later, the North should not still be waiting for certainty about what will replace it.

My position is straightforward: there should be a modern, publicly provided residential and respite care facility in Ramsey and the North.

Supporting more people to remain in their own homes for longer is sensible where that is right for the individual. But home based care does not remove the need for residential care, nor the need for respite provision that gives families and unpaid carers essential support.

I also believe it is important that public residential care remains available. We are increasingly seeing elderly care provided at fee levels that many individuals and families simply cannot afford. Replacing Cummal Mooar should not become a route towards withdrawing public provision and leaving people entirely dependent on the private market.

I would continue pressing for a clear plan, funding and timetable for its replacement.

Primary care closer to home

Good healthcare in the North is about more than the Cottage Hospital.

I would press for sufficient GP and NHS dental capacity in the North, keep access under scrutiny and challenge deterioration where it occurs.

An individual MHK cannot dictate the day to day operation of GP practices or simply create additional dentists, and I would not pretend otherwise. But an MHK can raise problems directly, scrutinise decisions and keep pressure on government and Manx Care when access is not good enough.

Where services can reasonably be delivered closer to where people live, we should look for opportunities to do that rather than assuming patients should always travel south.

Making better use of Jurby

The Jurby Health and Community Centre should form part of a joined up approach to healthcare in the North.

There is little point providing additional services at Jurby if people cannot practically get there. Equally, it is difficult to justify better transport links if the services that would create demand are never developed.

That is how government ends up stuck in a circle, with each part waiting for another to move first.

If we want to make greater use of facilities we have already built at Jurby, healthcare and transport planning need to happen together. Manx Care, DHSC and the Department of Infrastructure should be looking at service provision and accessibility as one problem rather than separate departmental responsibilities.

That is the sort of joined up government I want to see more of.

My commitment

As an MHK for Ramsey, I would keep northern healthcare under sustained scrutiny. I would hold Manx Care and DHSC to the commitments already made, defend a meaningful clinical role for Ramsey Cottage Hospital, press for a publicly provided replacement for Cummal Mooar and challenge decisions that weaken access to healthcare in the North.

There is little value in saying lessons have been learned unless we actually learn them.