KAREN Lumley, MP for Redditch County, met with consultants and management at the Alexandra Hospital on Friday (July 15, 2016) to highlight the feelings of patients to planned changes at the hospital.
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Alex as well as the Worcestershire Royal and Kidderminster Hospitals, has laid out plans which will see some services, such as maternity and paediatric overnight care, centred in Worcester, while other services will be brought to Redditch including breast reconstruction and chemotherapy.
Public consultation on the changes is set to begin around October and Mrs Lumley has now agreed to help organise a cross-party public meeting to discuss the reforms.
“People are quite rightly anxious about these changes, and one promise I managed to get everyone to agree to at the meeting on Friday was that there would be a public meeting, attended by council leaders, hospital bosses and consultants, where people will get the chance to have their say and to ask questions,” she said.
“I have said many times before that we must have safe hospital services, and that one thing that we need to address is for there to be a reliable public transport service between hospital sites.
“However, we do have to realise that the sustainable future for hospitals across the country will see the centring of services in various key locations, and while some services are going to be centred in Worcester, other new services are going to be brought to Redditch.”
The date for the public meeting, to be held in Redditch town hall, has yet to be set, but is likely to be in September or October. Mrs Lumley, who had previously offered to chair such a meeting will be joined by Councillor Bill Hartnett, the leader of Redditch borough council on the platform as co-chair.
