SaHF DMBC Volume 1 Edition 1.1.pdf - Shaping a healthier future

have (or may have) been discounted before a specific element of appraisal is applied, and
therefore options that may well have scored well in terms of later elements of the appraisal
are dismissed before an assessment can be undertaken. In particular it unnecessarily limits
the extent to which options can be tested in terms of quality and access, the criteria ranked
most important by patients and clinicians”.
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and Hammersmith & Fulham Health,
Housing & Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee
“The sequential nature of the methodology does not provide the opportunity for all of the
options to be tested on a truly comparable basis”.
Brent LINk
“Brent LINk again concurs with the Rideout Report 3 , seeing SAHF‟s decision to only use
travel times to determine the location of the five hospitals as inappropriate, given there are
other factors such as relative clinical performance, population need and the
interdependencies of other services”.
5.3.3 Petitions
We also received 18 petitions and campaign responses. 12 of the petitions opposed the
closure of A&E and other departments in hospitals; five were in support of Option A while
one supported West Middlesex‟s status as a major hospital.
The petitions (some with a large volume of signatories) were generally in support of
particular hospitals. These tended to either be in support of a specific option for hospitals set
out in the consultation document, or called for specific services (for instance A&E) to be
preserved for a particular hospital or hospitals. These petitions did not comment on the
specifics of the process. The largest petition with 25,193 signatories was a petition calling for
Ealing, Central Middlesex, Charing Cross and Hammersmith Hospitals to retain their status
and keep existing services, from Ealing Council. Further details of the petitions can be found
in Chapter 6 and Section 16 of Appendix F includes details of the full set of petitions
received.
5.3.4 The implications of this feedback for the process
We have considered feedback received about the process. None of the respondents that
disagreed with the process we used to identify options presented an alternative process,
although some implied that a non-sequential approach would have been more appropriate,
or suggested other evaluation criteria. On the question of using a non-sequential process,
we believe that approach to be impractical – as it would generate an unmanageable number
of options – and, more importantly, it would ignore the process of prioritisation of criteria
established in the pre-consultation phase in discussion with the public and other
stakeholders. Furthermore the JHOSC supported the process used by the programme and
it was commended by the OGC. The suggestion for additional criteria is discussed in
Chapter 9, but for completeness in this section, we believe that all have been effectively
included in the development of the proposals through the definition of the individual criteria
and the Equalities Impact Assessment.
We reached the conclusion that the process used pre-consultation is robust and should be
used post-consultation during decision making.
3 “Shaping a Healthier Future”, Independent Review Conducted by Tim Rideout Limited on behalf of
the London Borough of Ealing, September 2012.
5. Process for identifying a recommendation 52