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Emergency Care

First, let me pay tribute to the hospital in my constituency, Chase Farm hospital. It has been much mentioned in this Chamber over past years and will surely continue to be mentioned in time to come. I was at the hospital just over two weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon with my four-year-old granddaughter, who had injured her hand. She is recovering. When one is interacting with the NHS at the point of an emergency, it really comes into its own. It is fantastic. Within five minutes of walking into the hospital, my granddaughter was assessed and in less than two hours she was treated. She was then referred to another hospital that had a hand specialist. That is an important point, because when we talk about access to emergency departments and urgent care it is important to remember that accident and emergency departments do not deal with everything. A patient who goes into an accident and emergency department might be referred to another one or might be assessed in the ambulance by the paramedics and taken to a specialist hospital. The idea that there are not specialist hospitals or that accident and emergencies deal with everything all the time is a false assumption. That little girl saw a hand specialist at 8.30 on a Saturday night. By the Monday morning, she had had a small operation and I am pleased to report that she is recovering well. I think that that is a model story and I do not think that it is an unusual one. I base my opinion not just on that story but on the way in which Chase Farm hospital has responded to the pressures of winter and those over the Christmas period. The staff have worked very hard. Morale is sometimes low, because of the proposals to do with the hospital, but the staff have responded magnificently in recent times to the pressures that they are under and I pay tribute to them.