How Northamptonshire’s hospitals are doing against health secretary’s ABC priorities

Hospital boss gives grim verdict on where Northamptonshire stands against the new health secretary’s focus

By Sarah Ward

Simon Weldon says capacity has been saturated at the county’s hospitals

Unacceptable ambulance delays, capacity issues and hundreds of patients stranded in hospitals, have all been flagged up by the man in charge of running the county’s two general hospitals.

Group chief executive Simon Weldon, has written a tailored health check for how the general hospitals at Kettering and Northampton are faring against new health secretary Therese Coffey’s plan to resurrect the country’s ailing health service.

Earlier this month in her first speech to parliament Coffey used the first four letters of the alphabet to signal ambulance delays, a backlog of patients waiting for treatment, improved care and better access to doctors and dentists were her priorities.

The NHS is facing huge problems following the pandemic, with long waits for treatment, ambulances camped outside hospitals and taking too long to reach critically ill people and many of the country’s hospital beds are taken up by we…