Southend Hospital to provide specialist care for stroke patients (From Southend Standard)

It doesn't matter if Southend hospital specialises in anything, because on April 1st the tories will 100% privatise the NHS:

quote - The regulations force health commissioners to open up virtually all services to competition, either through competitive tendering or using the Any Qualified Provider market. The AQP market operates as the ‘Choose and Book’ system which provides patients with a shopping list of services to chose their treatment from.

From the 1st April commissioners will be required to advertise new contracts, then judge the bids received based on published criteria. The new regulations effectively close down the possibility of awarding a contract without competition, saying that this can only occur in very exceptional circumstances (namely emergency situations or when no other provider is capable of providing the same services) . They also pull arrangements between NHS bodies into the new competition regime. This appears totally contrary to former health secretary Andrew Lansley’s assurances to Clinical Commissioning Groups this time last year .

The new regulations grant Monitor sweeping statutory powers as a regulator to intervene and enforce competition . Monitor will be able to decide when commissioners have breached competition regulations, and have the authority to set aside contracts, stop arrangements that they deem flawed and to impose competitive tendering and the offer of Any Qualified Provider. During the Bill’s passage, Monitor’s role as regulator changed from one of ‘promoting competition’ to instead ‘preventing anti-competitive behaviour’, but as some suspected, this is a distinction without a difference .

Far from giving GPs flexible powers to choose the right provision for patients, these regulations force competitive markets across the board, barring only very exceptional circumstances. They bring an inherent assumption that a greater choice of providers is better for patients.

Implementing commercial competition throughout the NHS creates rights for independent providers to compete for any NHS funding that is spent on purchasing services for patients. Such a regime benefits private providers and reorientates the whole system towards the focus on penny-pinching that has just proved fatal to so many at Stafford Hospital . ‘Provider rights’ lock the privatisation of services into place because renationalisation would trigger compensation claims due under competition law, making it extremely expensive and politically difficult for a government to turn back - end quote

Read more here:

http://www.opendemoc
racy.net/ournhs/nico
la-cutcher-lucy-reyn
olds/nhs-as-we-know-
it-needs-prayer

There is still time to prevent this. Write to your MP, or sign the petition. Or do both.

Sign the petition here:

http://you.38degrees
.org.uk/petitions/pe
tition-to-stop-new-n
hs-competition-regul
ations-si257-being-p
assed

Write to your MP here:

http://www.writetoth
em.com

Well none of it is any good unless they've got good nursing services to provide the care which is need for these types of illnesses

Well dont expect instant blood results. It is no good making somewhere a centre for something and then taking other facilities away.
The whole idea of a Hospital is that it provided everything in the one place. Now it is all being fragmented with units all over the place for all different things, even within the town. Nothing will work unless attention is given to proper nursing.