Future Fit: Act now or face more delays, says Shropshire health boss
Plans to reorganise Shropshire's hospital services could be held up for another six months if a public consultation is not held in September, the man in charge of Shropshire's two main hospitals has said.
Speaking at a trust board meeting, Simon Wright, chief executive of The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH), said that the current round of treasury funding would only be available until November, so the plans had to go through a period of consultation before then.
The current recommendations are to base emergency medicine in Shrewsbury along with specialist women and children's services, while moving planned operations to Telford.
Mr Wright said: "We established Future Fit to get a solution in two years – we are now three-and-a-half years into that so the hospital is extremely frustrated at the slow pace of decision making. We just want a decision to be made.
"There is an opportunity for us to go out to public consultation in August/September and we have to make sure that happens. It is wrong that the public are not being given an opportunity to shape the services and answers. If we don’t go out to public consultation it will add an even longer delay.
“We have been working very hard with the treasury and department of health for well over a year now to make sure that the development is something they are happy with, the amount of money is available to us and we can afford to pay that cost."
Debbie Vogler, programme director for Future Fit, said the next three weeks will be critical to the review of hospital services in the county.
Ms Vogler told the board that an independent review into the Future Fit programme has concluded.
But she would not reveal the findings of an independent review of the work done so far, which was commissioned following concerns about the way Future Fit had come its conclusions.
Consultants KPMG were appointed to deliver a report into the Future Fit process that was launched more than three years ago to reorganise Shropshire's hospital services at a cost of several million pounds.
At a meeting at SaTH board members in Shrewsbury yesterday Debbie said: "The next three weeks is a critical period. The pace within the Future Fit team has been intense but I recognise the frustration. We will be making key decisions shortly.
"An audit of the process by KPMG has been completed and we will be discussing this on Monday. We will share that report on August 3 ahead of joint committee on August 10."
