COMMENT: Time to act on vow for A&E care

The University Hospitals North Midlands NHS Trust had previously said there were no plans to restore a full A&E service to the County Hospital in Weston Road.

But in the wake of the General Election campaign, when Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt pledged to return a 24-hour service to Stafford providing it was clinically safe, the trust, which runs the former Stafford Hospital, has said that the long term strategy for A&E in the town will be re-considered.

Stafford has been without overnight A&E cover at the hospital since 2011 and currently the County Hospital A&E only operates from8am to 10pm.

Another ray of light for the hopes of getting the service fully restored is that difficulties in recruiting staff for Stafford's main hospital finally seem to be easing.

In its new identity as County Hospital doctors and nurses posts that were previously proving hard to fill are being taken up.

Scandals over poor standards of care and the high mortality rate at the hospital between 2005 and 2008 had made the hospital, previously run by Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, somewhere where many NHS staff were not keen to move to.

The difficulty in attracting enough doctors and nurses was also a factor in the downgrading of services at the hospital.

Under UHNM, which also runs the Royal Stoke University Hospital, the image of the hospital appears to be changing for the better.

What the community served by the County Hospital wants to hear next is some definite time scale for when A&E services can be fully restored.

Mr Hunt, who gave his pledge on a visit to Stafford, now needs to press UHNM to show that it is making progress on the issue.

It has been far too long now that people have had to make long journeys to hospitals in Wolverhampton and Stoke-on-Trent at night if they needed emergency treatment.