LONG standing health stalwart Neal Stote says campaigners will hold be holding hospital bosses to account after a new model of care was approved by Redditch and Bromsgrove doctors and their colleagues countywide on Wednesday.
Mr Stote, the former chair of the Save the Alex campaign, has been at the forefront of keeping key health services at the Alexandra Hospital for more than a decade.
Now, with the loss of maternity, in-patient childrens care and emergency surgery at the hospital confirmed under the Future of Acute Hospital Service in Worcestershire plan, he said it was now up to the local health trust ‘to prove the doubters wrong.’
“For something that has been in the making for five years they still have an awful lot of things up in the air,” he said.
“They still haven’t addressed concerns about transport or capacity at the Worcestershire Royal site or the financial situation at the Trust.
“You also need to question whether they were listening to the people in their public consultation as 80 per cent said no to the changes but they still went ahead and did them anyway.”
The decision was taken by GPs belonging to Worcestershire’s three clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).
It rubber stamps the centralisation of emergency surgery at the Worcestershire Royal site and also the move of maternity and in-patient paediatrics to Worcester.
Doctors said the decision was about achieving the best possible outcomes for patients and that meant tailoring services to meet the availability of staff. The Trust is currently short of 140 medics and 160 nurses.
Michelle McKay, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “The outcome of this meeting will also bring much needed stability and certainty for the Trust – in particular it will allow us to give assurance to both current and prospective staff about the future provision of services and will help us with both retaining and attracting staff.
“A number of enabling works now need to be carried out for us to be able to deliver the proposed clinical model.
“These include 81 additional beds, a High Dependency Unit and the creation of 141 new car parking spaces at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
“At the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch plans include the refurbishment and modernisation of operating theatres and improvements to endoscopy facilities.
“An Outline Business Case, which forms the basis for a bid for £29.6m of capital funding from the Department of Health to pay for enabling works, has been finalised and will be put forward for consideration during the summer months.
“An action plan is in place to deliver these changes by May 2020.”
