Shropshire health chiefs will meet at the end of this month to finalise the options for transforming hospital services at Shrewsbury and Telford.

They will agree a firm set of proposals for a public consultation starting on December 6 and lasting 14 weeks. The meeting will take place during the week beginning November 29. Plans have already been discussed with staff and NHS stakeholders.

Leading doctors have suggested turning the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford’s Princess Royal into “centres of excellence” to secure their long term future.

The PRH would become the centre for women and children’s services with the RSH assuming the role for acute surgery and major trauma. The Telford site would include consultant maternity, neonatal and inpatient paediatric units.

Both sites would continue to provide outpatients, day surgery and diagnostic services, as well as medical assessment and inpatient general medicine.

Midwife-led maternity units would also continue to be run at both hospitals, and both would keep a “credible” A&E department.

Another proposed model would see the PRH responsible for breast, urological, vascular and orthopaedic (routine and emergency) surgery. It could also deal with major non life-threatening trauma and medicine.

At the RSH there would be colorectal, upper gastro-intestinal and orthopaedic (mainly emergency, including multiple injuries) surgery. Shrewsbury would handle major life-threatening trauma.

Such a move, it is claimed, would produce two well-balanced sites, providing a wide range of surgical services, and ending costly and unnecessary duplication.

It has also been proposed that inpatient children’s services should be concentrated at just one of the hospitals.

The consultation will end on March 11.

Board members of Shropshire County Primary Care Trust, NHS Telford and Wrekin, and the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, will then spend up to a week reviewing the consultation results.

Later in March they will take a final decision.

The chief executives of the trusts recently highlighted the need for changes.

They warned there could be times when there are not enough doctors to cover all departments of the county’s two main hospitals.

It is becoming increasingly hard to make sure the “right people with the right skills are always in the right place” to deal with the needs of patients.

By Health Correspondent Dave Morris