Wycombe Hospital patients praise doctors despite staff shortages and repairs backlog

Patients at Wycombe Hospital have praised its doctors, nurses and other workers despite ongoing staff shortages and the repairs backlog at the site.

The hospital has an unaffordable backlog of maintenance requirements of around £100 million, with £80 million of that related to the 1960s tower, according to Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

The eight-storey block requires £2m a year just to make it safe and in recent years, more than a third of its external concrete cladding panels have been stripped off to stop them falling on people and scaffolding related to this was taken down earlier this year.

The tower houses an intensive care unit, operating theatres, an endoscopy suite, various administrative and training areas and a cardiac ward.

One recent visitor to the building complained that the lifts there were either out of order or ‘took an age’ and stopped at every floor whether someone was waiting there or not.

After their report, the Local Democracy Reporting Service visited the site on Friday to ask patients about their experiences.

Several praised the care they received despite an apparent lack of staff and the shabby appearance of some parts of the hospital, which is just off Queen Alexandra Road.

One woman said: “I have an urgent request from both the hospital and the doctor for an urgent blood test which takes about two minutes.”

However, the patient claims she waited at the hospital for 40 minutes before being told by a receptionist to go home and come back later due to staff shortages.

She added: “This is a concern. If you have an urgent need from the hospital, from the doctor, it seems like they should be able to put you up front a little bit. But it is nothing to do with the construction issues.”

Another patient, who had suffered a stroke, said the care they had received at the hospital over six months had been good.

However, her friend said Wycombe needed a more modern hospital, adding: “We just need to build a new one. Get it down.”

She added that the site needed a general ‘modernisation and overhaul’.

Another visitor, Roz Hester, from Stokenchurch, said: “We are very lucky we don’t have to attend the hospital that often but whenever we have gone past there has always been scaffolding up for years it seems.”

The 73-year-old said it been very difficult to try and arrange an appointment at the hospital.

She said: “They are so fully booked, that you can’t even get a blood test. It’s madness, (though) it is what it is.

“The thing is, I think we’ve all got very lackadaisical about it, you know ‘oh yeah, you can’t see a doctor’, we accept it.”

Mala Chamilall, from High Wycombe, was receiving physiotherapy at Wycombe Hospital on Friday after suffering two broken legs when a driver hit her.

The 74-year-old explained that she was pleased with the care she had received at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury and Wycombe, and that the facilities were fine in her opinion.

She said: “It is very good. I am very happy about it. I have started walking round. They have done very well on my leg – both legs. You read about the NHS, but I have had first-class service.”

Meanwhile, a man visiting the hospital for an injection said he had not been impacted by the ongoing repair issues and the maintenance to the buildings, but that other people may have been.

He said: “The only thing I would say is that there was a huge waiting line for the lifts, but I wasn’t subject to it. I thought, ‘sod that’ and I went up the stairs.”

A spokesperson for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust said: “The Wycombe Hospital tower was a building designed and built in the 1960s with small, narrow wards and poor ventilation.

“Our priority remains to provide excellent care to all patients, however the risks with failing infrastructure and reputational damage continue to grow and the ability to mitigate and manage these issues is becoming increasingly challenging.

“The Board have recognised the requirement to move services due to the challenging estate conditions, however to date, the Trust has been unsuccessful in securing national funding for a new hospital.

“We continue to work with NHS England and other partners to find funding solutions.”