Pierre Landell-Mills, chairman, Dartmouth Patient Participation Group, writes:
Judging from the letters printed in last week’s Chronicle, a number of people in Dartmouth continue to be angry at NHS plans to close Dartmouth Hospital and their decision not to reopen our minor injuries unit. That is understandable, but no longer a constructive approach. We need to move beyond disappointment and recognise the realities we must confront.
As Messrs Waring and McIven explained in their letters, we live in a world of highly constrained resources, while the demands for and cost of healthcare are skyrocketing.
Moreover, the Government has reduced NHS funding for Devon. Consequently, the local Clinical Commissioning Group is being forced to save money, while at the same time seek new ways to improve the delivery of healthcare in south Devon – a challenging task if ever there was one. The CCG has come up with proposals that should not be dismissed out of hand. They are likely to be the best we will get unless you believe that loud protesting will magic up new money from nowhere.
The CCG’s plan, which has been discussed widely across south Devon, envisages closing four community hospitals in order to free up the resources to establish eight new health and well-being centres, provide supervised intermediary care in local care homes and greatly increase the number of patients treated at home.
There will also be new hubs for clinic services and treating minor injuries 12 hours a day, seven days a week. In our case the hub will be in Totnes.
Clearly, this will be an improvement on what we had in the past – an MIU open on a much more limited basis, little care at home and having to travel to Torbay for most clinics.
Furthermore, it was evident that both our surgery and hospital were housed in Victorian buildings, which were prohibitively expensive to maintain and no longer fit for purpose. We now seem on course to have a modern health facility in Townstal, with adequate parking, where the surgery, some clinics, domiciliary care, four intermediate care beds and Dartmouth Caring will all be located.
Rather than look back in anger, it would be more constructive for Dartmouth area residents to focus their efforts on ensuring that the CCG delivers on all its promises. This is what your PPG is trying to do. If the protesters have better ideas for improving services and saving money, we would like to hear about them.
Cllr Henshall from Kingsbridge criticises the PPG for not looking after the interests of Kingswear. We sympathise with the residents of Kingswear, but they are not part of the Dartmouth area patients group and we are not elected to represent them.
Last, let me reiterate that the PPG is open to all suggestions. These may be sent to us at [email protected] and may be posted on our website at www.dartpatients. co.uk.