Liverpool Women’s is very special and we know that the people of Liverpool have a place close in their hearts for the hospital and our staff. We do amazing things here and that is down to the fantastic quality of care that our staff provide each and every day. The thousands of people who have passed through our doors as a patient, friend or family member at our current hospital site on Crown Street will have an emotional attachment to us, as will many more of you who have received care in our previous hospital sites across the city over the years.
Liverpool has a rich history of providing care for women and babies that dates back to 1796 and over the last few years we as a Trust have been working extremely hard to continue the improvement and evolution of our services by trying to plan for the long term future. However we have become aware that some of our patients, visitors, and public are still unclear about what our preferred plans are. I hope that this message will help explain what is happening at Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
- Liverpool Women’s is not closing, we want to make our services for women and babies in Liverpool even better for the future
- Our preferred option for the future is to build a new Liverpool Women’s Hospital which will be physically joined to the new Royal Liverpool Hospital. This would give our services greater access to other specialists that we simply cannot achieve from our current hospital site
- Regardless of any approved plans for the future, we will be staying at Crown Street for at least the next few years and we will continue to keep our patients safe by investing in our current hospital site – you will see over the next few months that we are improving our Neonatal Unit to keep our most vulnerable babies safe
- Approval needs to be given to proceed with our plans for the future through a public consultation. We don’t know when this will take place but we hope it will happen soon. Even if we can go ahead with our preferred plans for the future, a new hospital would take a number of years to build.
- In the meantime, to keep you informed and involved we will continue to share information about our existing challenges and why relocating to a new hospital is clinically the best thing to do for our patients in the long-term.
Our current services at Crown Street are safe and we continue to provide the best possible care to patients. Our preferred future plans are about ensuring we can maintain this quality of care to keep the future generations of babies, mothers, and women of Liverpool safe.
We are not closing. We want to build a new state of the art Liverpool Women’s Hospital in the future to provide even better care to our patients.
What we would like to ask now is for the local population of Liverpool and the surrounding areas to take the time to understand our preferred plans for the future. We can assure you that we will always act in the best interests of our patients and the nurses, midwives, doctors and other health care professionals who provide such excellent care at Liverpool Women’s.
If you are interested in the future of Liverpool Women’s please take a look at the facts about our preferred plans at www.liverpoolwomens.nhs.uk/ourfuture. We are also always happy to talk to anyone who has any questions about our preferred plans for the future.
If you would like to speak to us please contact communications@lwh.nhs.uk and this can be arranged.
We feel that the women and babies of Liverpool and beyond deserve the best possible care available and this is why we are so passionate about the need for change in the future.
Dr Andrew Loughney
Medical Director
For more information about the challenges we currently face, take a look at the following: