Health officials quizzed over eye service switch
Cataract surgery was moved from Telford to Shrewsbury because there was no room at Princess Royal Hospital – and "no desire" from commissioners to spend £4m on a new facility, a health committee was told.
Members of Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (Sath) were quizzed on the future of the county's eye services by representatives of the Joint Health Overview Scrutiny Committee – a group made up of councillors from both Telford & Wrekin and Shropshire.
The service had been run out of three sites in Shropshire, Princess Royal Hospital in Telford (PRH), Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, and Euston House in Telford.
Earlier this year Sath announced that it wanted to close Euston House and move its services to the respective hospitals, and cataract surgery to the Shrewsbury site.
It is currently consulting on its plans, with a final decision yet to be taken.
Telford & Wrekin Councillor Paul Watling, a member of the committee, pressed Tony Fox, a medical director and vascular surgeon with Sath, on why the surgery was being moved to Shrewsbury and not Telford.
Councillor Watling questioned the sense in the move, when he suggested that the services would sit alongside those planned to move to PRH under the changes proposed in Future Fit.
He said: "In terms of medical need and patient need why has that been done?
"With the issues around Future Fit to be decided it does not seem a good business decision to do that at this stage.
"Would it not be better to put your service with the other services that need to be linked with it, which from option one of Future Fit would be at PRH?"
However, Mr Fox said the problems with the service being provided by the ophthalmology department were so serious that it was not possible to wait until the Future Fit changes were carried out to take action.
He said: "We had to take a significant decision about it in January and Future Fit was not where it is now.
"And we are looking at three to four years down the lines with the developments with Future Fit."
He added: "We needed action now."
Mr Fox said that moving it to PRH would have required new buildings and more expense.
He said that option, or another new site, had been discounted on account of cost.
He said: "It was looked at in the costs and it would be about £4m and there was no desire to engage from commissioners."
He said the current option would cost around two million pounds, but was still half the cost of building a new unit.
