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Further plan to downgrade Weston Hospital in the horizon?

by mikebell on 9 April, 2019

Weston’s A&E could be downgraded to an urgent treatment centre within two years, if potential suggestions are endorsed by health bosses.

Proposals to shut A&E overnight are already being pursued, but a new report has revealed these may well be just the start of reducing emergency care at Weston General Hospital.

Longer-term ideas include scrapping critical care and consultant posts.

North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) – which decides which services are run at the hospital – has stressed nothing has been decided or will be imminently on these further suggestions.

Councillor Mike Bell said: “As I’ve been warning for a while, the NHS plans long-term to downgrade Weston Hospital and close our A&E altogether. Hospital doctors describe the plan as “horrifying”, and they are right.

“I’m totally opposed to the planned A&E changes and the loss of emergency surgery and care beds. I’ll continue to do everyone can to argue against this and persuade the NHS to rethink. They can start by immediately giving the hospital doctors alternative model for A&E a trial run. If it works, it can make some of the arguments for the changes redundant.”

   3 Comments

3 Responses

  1. Mrs Rosalind Sales says:

    If Weston does not have a hospital which is accessible life for sick people here will be impossible. I am personally disabled and as I get older much worse. If I need treatment I usually get taken to Southmead in Bristol, or St Michael’s. If Weston doctors changed their attitude, took less money themselves, and employed more staff, they could become a top Somerset hospital, of which they would be very proud.

  2. John Royston KT says:

    Weston General Hospital will if NHS plans go ahead,
    reduce WGH to nothing more than a cottage style hospital.
    Back in the day at least a cottage hospital had a form of an AE dept.
    What is one to do if you have had an accident which could mean one slowly bleeding out? A person could be dead by the time they reach the BRI.
    We, the local population have paid for all NHS services over, and over, again.
    This is just not right.

  3. Joan darby says:

    I have had personal experience of the what the overnight closure of A&E can have with my late husband.
    At the moment I have a friend with a relative in Southmead. In one week she has paid out nearly £100 in petrol, parking etc. Never mind the trauma for her of having to travel daily. which is extremely wearing. Weston Hospital was brilliant on may occasions when my husband was ill. But we did have a couple of episodes of having to go to Bristol and it was a nightmare.Weston is a growing town and it is absolutely vital that we have a fully functional hospital and A&E NOT A COTTAGE HOSPITAL.

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