The Medway Labour and Co-operative Group have welcomed the news that the Urgent and Emergency care department at Medway Maritime Hospital is now rated ‘good’, an improvement of its previous rating of inadequate.

Cllr Teresa Murray, Medway Labour and Co-operative Group Spokesperson for Health said:

“The Good CQC rating for MMT’s Emergency care department is a tribute to the hard work and commitment of front line staff and the determination of senior managers at the hospital to make the department work better. Our grateful thanks go to everyone involved in helping patients get a long-overdue better experience when they are poorly.

“Government funding has improved facilities but there is much more to do because the hospital has a huge backlog of repairs caused by Tory cuts. Staffing shortages mean that too many agency staff are being used which depletes the budget too.

“The Emergency Department struggles every day with large numbers of people attending inappropriately because they cannot get GP appointments, and our determination to get the Scrutiny task group to tackle this issue will hopefully help to take pressure off the ED in the longer term.”

ENDS

Notes

The Medway Labour and Co-operative Group have fought on behalf of health workers for a long time, and our Councillors collectively helped fund a new gym for staff through their own personal donations – https://www.medwaylabour.org.uk/medway-labour-donations-help-to-open-new-fitness-hub-for-hospital-workers/

In order to further support emergency care workers, we spearheaded the campaigning for a cross-party task group to address the problems facing our overstretched GPs, in order to discourage members of the public from straining our A+E if it wasn’t completely necessary – https://www.medwaylabour.org.uk/creation-of-new-cross-party-gp-task-group/