Ysbyty Glan Clwyd – the hospital at the centre of controversial plans to downgrade maternity services in north Wales – has vanished from an online NHS search facility.
The NHS Direct Wales website gives users the option to look for maternity services close to home via a postcode search function but Welsh Conservatives have discovered that maternity services at Glan Clwyd Hospital no longer appear as an option.
Not a single postcode in North Wales provides a search result which lists maternity services at Glan Clwyd; even the hospital’s own:
http://www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk/localservices/searchresults.aspx?q=LL18 5UJ&s=Hospital&f=104&aw=1
(accessed October 16th 2015)
Glan Clwyd is Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board’s preferred option for a maternity service downgrade which could see doctor-led care suspended at the hospital. A public consultation on the proposals recently closed and, this week, the Board revealed that some consultation responses have been lost.
Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister, Darren Millar AM, said:
“Despite being placed in Special Measures by the Welsh Labour government, NHS bosses in north Wales appear to be lurching from one calamity to another.
“Just days after they revealed that public consultation responses have been lost, we now find that maternity services at a hospital involved in the process have vanished from the NHS Direct Wales website.
“Anyone living near the hospital would be forgiven for thinking a decision to downgrade services is already done and dusted!
“Communities will rightly question this omission and the health board must explain why this has happened – as soon as possible.”
(A screenshot of Ysbyty Glan Clwyd’s postcode search on the NHS Direct Wales website can be seen at the top of this article)