One member of staff condemned the decision to email the announcement and said that it came as a further blow to workers. She expressed concerns that jobs could be lost if services were privatised and called on management to ‘come clean’ about the plans. Councillor Jean Ashworth, who works as a healthcare assistant, said: "This is another major blow to staff morale with no real explanation of what will happen. "More than 50 people work at the radiology departments at the Infirmary and they fear that there could be job losses or that people will have to reapply for their jobs. It’s just so upsetting to get an email with this information because we have no chance to ask questions of management. "What we need now are answers. We feel that we are not being told what’s really happening and we want to know just what’s going on." The email, which was written by Dr Mahesh Kumar Neelala, clinical director of radiology, states that the examination aims to ‘identify areas within the service where partnership working with Euromedic may be of mutual benefit’. It reads: "At this stage the contacts are purely exploratory, but they could lead to closer partnership working in the future. "Representatives from Euromedic visited the trust on 6 August. The full review will specifically include areas such as on call radiology services, including interventional radiology, plain film reporting, antenatal ultrasound services, capacity and demand of radiology services." No one at Pennine Acute was available for comment as the Observer went to press. Back |
News
Video |
Interdate LTD.