I confess I felt quite emotional at the recent opening of the Friarage Hospital’s new surgical centre.
It marked a major milestone for me as your local MP – a journey which began when I was first elected ten years ago.
Top of my in-tray then was the local hospital’s future – and it wasn’t looking bright.
The year before, children’s services had been downgraded with the loss of consultant paediatricians based at the hospital.
While the maternity unit was retained for straightforward births, the loss of the senior doctors meant the hospital couldn’t treat very sick children.
As the father of two small daughters that worried me – apart from my responsibilities as your MP.
Then the threat to the A&E department emerged in 2017 for very similar reasons – an inability to attract the senior, experienced, doctors to work at the Northallerton hospital.
At a meeting of hospital staff I organised in 2017, Friarage doctors spelt out to me what the loss of emergency care would mean for the future of the hospital. Closure was openly talked about.
My first task was to convince the South Tees hospitals trust, which ran the Friarage, to invest in the hospital, not to run it down. There was a widespread perception at the time that the Middlesbrough-based trust was only interested in providing services at the much-bigger James Cook University Hospital.
Then, with the emergency closure of the A&E department in 2019, the task became even harder. A public meeting I organised in the main hall of the old Grammar School showed the strength of people’s concern about the situation. It also allowed the senior doctors in charge of the hospital to explain why they believed they couldn’t sustain a safe A&E at Northallerton and that the best option for the future was an all-singing, all-dancing urgent treatment centre.
It was after that meeting that I commissioned my own independent report from healthcare consultants about what was proposed. I wanted to know if the doctors and the trust were right about the recruitment issue which they said was central to the problem at the Friarage. The report concluded that, in essence, they were correct.
But it was almost an aside from one of the doctors taking questions at the public meeting that was the spark for what culminated in the joyous ceremony at the hospital earlier this month.
He said the key thing that would help attract the senior, specialist, experienced doctors and nurses to the Friarage to secure its future was the replacement of the hospital’s ageing operating theatres.
I backed the business case they put together for the £35.5m investment in the new theatre block and helped secure the funding for it when in Government.
Throughout it has been a pleasure to work with the staff, led by Sarah Baker, lead nurse for the surgical centre, who are so committed to the Friarage and its future.
There are so many to thank but I would specifically mention James Dunbar, senior consultant and clinical director, who was one of the doctors who took questions at that 2019 public meeting and whose passion for the Friarage runs through him like a stick of rock.
And Sue Page was the interim chief executive at the South Tees trust who fully understood why the Friarage is so important and backed all the recent investments we have seen in recent years, including the new kidney, eye and diagnostic services.
Finally, I want to thank all the local people who share this passion for our local hospital. People who have written to me, approached me in the street, attended public meetings and have been part of the campaign to turnaround the fortunes of the Friarage.
It was a tremendous collective effort to convince the people who make these decisions that a small rural hospital could be sustainable – a centre of excellence indeed – in the modern medical world of increasing specialisation and centralisation.
Without doubt, the official opening of the Friarage Surgical Centre earlier this month was my proudest day as your MP.
