People living on the Shropshire/Welsh border caught up in a healthcare lottery were urged today to raise their problems with health trust bosses.

Patients in many villages in the Oswestry area and on the north Shropshire border have been left confused about what they are entitled to compared to their neighbours in Wales.

It has ranged from whether they have to pay for their prescriptions to whether they are entitled to fertility treatment.

And now a man leading a team looking at health issues in the area is calling for those experiencing problems to let Shropshire Primary Care Trust know.

Simon Kenton, the director of joint commissioning for the PCT, said many of the problems arose when patients lived on one side of the border with Wales but their doctors’ surgery was on the other side.

Talking to a local joint committee meeting in Selattyn, near Oswestry, recently, Mr Kenton said the problems affected 4,500 people who lived on the border between Oswestry and Chirk with about 500 affected in the Hanmer area and just over 400 in the Overton-on-Dee area.

Mr Kenton said: “If people living in England have their GP surgery in Wales then the Welsh Local Health Board is responsible for commissioning the treatment but the Shropshire PCT is responsible for funding the treatment. This is reversed for people living in Wales but with their GP surgery in England.”

He said differences ranged from whether prescriptions were free or paid for to the fact that in some cases medical intervention was different.

People said they wanted to see cervical smear tests offered to younger women in England to put them on parity with those in Wales.