STRUCTURE: Clinicians and managers are offering the public personal briefings on planned changes to services at Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust.

The trust has held seven public meetings as part of a formal public consultation on plans to improve NHS services in West Sussex, which it says have been attended by around 250 people.

But it is also offering more intimate options in the run up to the end of the consultation on 29 April.

In a press statement it says: “Senior health service clinicians and managers continue to be available to provide personal briefings and presentations to any interested group wanting to know more about the plans, or seeking to give feedback.”

Trust medical director Phillip Barnes said: “The public meetings have been lively, and not always easy for those of us sitting on the platform, but they have been extremely useful in showing us where people have concerns, and where we might need to do more to address these concerns.”

Dr Barnes added: “We still want to hear from people who can help us to improve our plans still further – face-to-face briefings can be a really constructive way of getting feedback, and having a genuinely two-way discussion about how we can provide the best possible services.”

Under the plans, titled “Service Redesign for Quality in West Sussex – Our proposals for better care”, the trust’s Southlands Hospital will become an outpatients and day surgery centre, with its inpatients services largely transferred to Worthing Hospital.

There will also be investment into community services, including extra support from GPs and other medical staff to care for people in their own home, or near to their home.

The proposals include:

  • Relocating inpatient orthopaedics from Southlands to Worthing Hospital
  • Relocating inpatient elderly care from Southlands to Worthing Hospital
  • Providing an extra 60 beds at Worthing Hospital
  • Building two new “laminar flow” operating theatres for orthopaedic surgery at Worthing Hospital
  • Developing Southlands Hospital as a centre for outpatients, diagnostics and day surgery
  • Relocating ophthalmology services from Worthing Hospital to Southlands and St Richard’s Hospitals
  • Investing to provide new services and extra beds in the community, especially “step down” beds for people who have had a long stay in hospital

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Source

Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust press release (see attached, right)

Source date

11 April 2011

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