TOWN leaders have reacted to rumours that consultants from the North Hamp-shire Hospital in Basingstoke will no longer visit patients in Bordon. Members of the Whitehill and Bordon Town Partnership said they were told by sources close to the hospital, last month, that consultants are to stop travelling to Bordon's Chase Community Hospital. In a letter to Whitehill Town Council, Town Partnership chairman Bill Wain said this would mean patients would have to travel to the Basingstoke hospital for appointments, which the group considered "unacceptable". Town councillors unanimously backed a request from the Partnership for them to arrange a meeting with the North Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, to discuss the future of Chase Hospital's diagnostic and treatment centre. But Donna Rowell, outpatient general manager at the North Hampshire Hospital, told The Herald there were "no plans to stop consultants visiting the Chase Hospital". The town council also registered its support for the campaign to save the accident-and- emergency department at Guildford's Royal Surrey Hospital from closure. Chase Hospital's diagnostic and treatment centre is a fast-track surgery, where visiting consultants treat common problems for which there are long waiting lists at general hospitals. The centre was one of the first wave of eight such centres across the country, announced by the government in 2002, with the Department of Health ploughing more than £700,000 into the facility. After fears were voiced last year that the Chase Hospital would close, assurances were given by the North Hampshire Primary Care Trust (PCT), since succeeded by Hampshire PCT as manager of the hospital, that this would not happen. But, when calling for an A&E department at the Chase last week, Adam Carew, county councillor for Whitehill, Bordon and Lindford, said he felt since the establishment of the Hampshire PCT in Basingstoke had been an effort to centralise services in the town. He said this "could be an issue" for community hospitals if consultants did not travel to see patients, but stressed that this "isn't the case at the Chase". But Peggy Jones, secretary of the Chase Hospital League of Friends, said the hospital was "very quiet" and that equipment purchased by the League was "under utilised" because the hospital "don't always have the staff to use it". Mrs Jones said: "First of all, people need to get their GPs to send them to the Chase and then we need to get the consultants to come to the Chase because for those who cannot drive, the journey to Basingstoke is difficult. "Patients should encourage consultants to come to the Chase because that will get more of them to go there."
