Campaigners have applauded a call for the resignation of a hospitals’ boss over what is feared to be the downgrading of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital.
Trust chief executive Matthew Kershaw was asked to step down at the end of a stormy public meeting during which he was unable to offer any reassurances about its future as an acute site.
From today, emergency heart and stroke patients will no longer be taken to the K&C because most of the hospital’s junior doctors have been moved to Ashford as there are insufficient consultants to supervise them at Canterbury.
Underfire Mr Kershaw insisted the K&C would not close and said it had a “vibrant future”, but he admitted that acute care could only return if Health Education England deemed it was safe to do so.
The call for his resignation came from the chairman of Concern for Health in East Kent (Chek), Ken Rogers.
He said: “I’m angry we are in this current diabolical situation and that we have to fight to collect money for a service that is owned by you.
“I’m angry about the services that have drifted away from the K&C in the last 10 years and this temporary move of acute care was not consulted on.
Full story in Kent Online, 19 June 2017