Bridlington Unlikely to Ever Get Accident and Emergency Department

Despite calls for better utilisation of Bridlington Hospital, health officials indicate that the town is unlikely to gain a full Accident and Emergency department.

Bridlington MP, Charlie Dewhirst, has been vocal about his concerns regarding healthcare services in Bridlington, stating that the hospital, while a "fantastic site" that has benefited from investments, is "chronically underused". He believes the site has the potential to become a "health hub" for the town. 

Mr Dewhirst recently highlighted a significant 35% fall in local outpatient appointments at the hospital over four years, affecting specialities like ophthalmology, audiology, and rheumatology. 

This decline means two-thirds of Bridlington residents are travelling away from the town for routine outpatient care. Mr Dewhirst also drew attention to Bridlington's demographic challenges, noting it has the oldest and most deprived population in the East Riding of Yorkshire, with concerning statistics on life expectancy and deprivation in local wards. He quoted the Director of Public Health for the East Riding, who described the growing inequalities in health outcomes in Bridlington as a "wake-up call".

However, explaining the complexities of establishing an A&E, Simon Cox, East Riding of Yorkshire Place Director at Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, outlined some of  the specific criteria required for a full department. 

"Typically to justify and require a, a full accent emergency department it needs to have a certain degree of population coverage. 

It's usually about quarter of a million people. Bridlington's population is just over 40,000, if you expanded it to parts of Driffield and down into Hornsea you might stretch to 80,000.  But really it needs to be somewhere that's at least of the size of Scarborough or Scunthorpe If not bigger. 

And even some of those larger hospitals like Scarborough don't take every type of emergency.

So Bridlington isn't large enough and we wouldn't be able to support all the range of specialist services for people in A&E."

Mr Cox explained that a functioning A&E must be equipped to take "unselected emergency admissions," meaning ambulances take patients to the nearest A&E regardless of their condition. This necessitates a wide range of specialist services on site. Requirements include dedicated emergency physicians in the emergency department and backup from mainstream specialities such as surgery, orthopedics, and general medicine. Crucially, Mr Cox stated that it is "always the case now that an A&E has an intensive care unit on site".

The need for an intensive care unit (ICU) is paramount because the severity of a patient's illness is not always known upon arrival. Seriously ill patients might require ventilation or significant support for vital organs, which is provided in intensive care.

The concern, Mr Cox articulated, is that establishing an A&E in Bridlington without the full necessary services, like an ICU, would create a "second tier service". 

"People not surprisingly think that all hospitals sort of provide the same services and actually in reality, what's provided at at Hull Royal Hospital is quite different to what's provided at Scarborough. That's quite different to what's provided at Bridlington.

What we wouldn't want to do would be to open an A&E in Bridlington and to provide effectively a, a second tier service. So, you know, if you went to A&E and they suddenly thought, they're really ill, actually, they need to be put in a ventilator. Well actually we haven't got, an intensive care unit, so we'll have to send you somewhere else. 

So we don't want to have a two tier system."

While Mr Dewhirst continues to push for a "comprehensive strategy" and an "immediate action plan" to address Bridlington's healthcare challenges and improve service accessibility, the detailed clinical requirements and population thresholds explained by Mr Cox suggest the town is unlikely to ever get a full A&E department.

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