HEALTH chiefs hope that Parkinson’s patients in east Cheshire will soon be able to benefit from a new specialist nurse.
East Cheshire NHS Trust has stopped providing the Parkinson’s Disease nursing service after its one nurse resigned from her post in January.
Now, Eastern Cheshire clinical commissioning group (CCG) – the body which buys NHS healthcare in the area – has lined up a new provider with a bigger workforce to take on the service.
Neil Evans, commissioning director at the CCG, said: “What we will have is a locally-based service as provided before, but from a larger provider with a greater ability to offer a range of services for patients.
“In the short-term we do have a challenge because there isn’t a nurse in post at the moment, so the sooner we can get a nurse in post and back in the locality of eastern Cheshire, the better for our population.”
Cllr Liz Durham, Conservative, knew the previous Parkinson’s nurse having worked at Macclesfield Hospital for 25 years.
She called for reassurance that the new nurse would have the same personal approach with their patients as their predecessor.
She said: “I know it was important to her and important to her patients that they saw the same person.”
Mr Evans told the committee it will be a ‘named eastern Cheshire nurse’ who the patients will get to know, and that the provider lined up for the service has begun the recruitment process.
He added that patients will benefit from the nurse being able to offer prescriptions, and that the nurse will have received specialist training and supervision from the new provider.
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