THE war of words over the threat to close the beds at Haslemere Community Hospital reached fever pitch last week when around 400 residents turned out in force for the latest consultation meeting over the unpopular proposals. Questions came thick and fast as campaign supporters bombarded a panel of senior executives from the Guildford and Waverley Primary Care Trust (PCT), which bore the brunt of a town outraged by the plans. Many clad in dressing gowns and bearing a symbolic axe, which was handed over by the chairman of Haslemere Hospital League of Friends, Dr Nicky Lee, to Jane Dale, the interim chief executive of the PCT before the start of the meeting, 340 people filled the Haslemere Hall to capacity. Among them was local MP Jeremy Hunt, Surrey county councillor Christine Stevens, Waverley borough councillors, Haslemere town councillors, local doctors and health professionals. There was an overspill of 60 campaigners who were turned away and invited to attend a similar meeting at Haslemere Museum because of the lack of space at the hall. A huge banner and placard- waving children from several Haslemere schools, including Wispers and St Bartholomew's Primary, provided the messages and chants outside the hall. Haslemere had never seen anything quite like it - that is since the town last successfully campaigned to save its hospital beds, just five years ago. But this time the mood has changed, with a claim from Diane Davis, the chairman of Cranleigh Hospital League of Friends, that communitiy was being pitted against community over which hospital could eventually lose its beds. The PCT is taking drastic measures to address a £16.3 million overspend in local health services, and bring about one and a half to £2m saving by the end of the year. The consultation meeting was the fifth of six such meetings which have taken place around the area. These are part of the PCTs "Modernising Your Local Healthcare" scheme for future of services provided at Haslemere, Cranleigh, Milford and Farnham hospitals and proposed service developments at Godalming. The audience listened politely as the panel put forward the case for the PCT's proposals. The panel included Jane Dale; chairman Chris Grimes; Guildford GP Dr Simon de Lusignan, chairman of the professional executive committee, (PEC) and Simon Williams, director of policy at Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority. Also on the panel was PCT facilitator Julia Ross, who kept order during the sometimes stormy meeting and the assistant director of community hospitals, Rose Parry, who did not join in the debate. With much of the presentation given over to the need to provide a better service through local treatment centres and community hospitals, and to cut unnecessary hospital admissions, by making the best use of resources, Mr Williams spelled out the reasons for change and why the current health system was not working well. "We need to change and make the best use of resources. The car park at the Royal Surrey Hospital is full of outpatients going for diagnostic tests and the current system is not sustainable clinically or financially." Mr Williams said he believed that 95 per cent of healthcare should take place at local care centres rather than people having to travel to large, acute hospitals. "The financial issue is not unique to Guildford and Waverley, but we can't live year to year trying to patch up the problems. It is not good use of public money," he told the audience. He assured the audience: "It is important to say that there is no intention to close Haslemere Community Hospital but to decide what should be in it." But he said there would be a "trade-off" in providing the sort of health-care services envisaged. Having the number of hospital beds much below 30, he told the audience, was not viable. He said: "It is not sensible or honest to have them in every single place. "Our strategic aim is to deliver more care close to where people live across the whole of the PCT area." Mrs Dale also said that the PCT "wanted to develop services closest to people's homes in the most cost-efficient manner and develop community services to manage people differently." She praised Haslemere Hospital League of Friends and spoke of the uniqueness of Haslemere's Godwin Unit, which provided a specialist unit for young, physically disabled people from Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex. Dr de Lusignan reflected on the provision of clinical services, among them the need to provide a wider range of services, including the expansion of the roles of the GPs and primary healthcare professionals. He said that people with long-term health conditions "wanted to be managed at home wherever possible". But none of the aims of the PCT washed with the audience which was vociferous in its insistence on maintaining the status quo at Haslemere Community Hospital. Applause greeted the point made by a former mayor of the town, Michael Barnes, who felt that rather than talking of cutting back beds, there should be talks on how to increase them. "Why do we constantly have to fight to save our hospital?" he asked. Dr Lee said that with the bed occupancy of Haslemere running at 90 per cent, she believed that instead of closing beds, the PCT should be opening up the hospital's minor injuries department at the weekends and thinking twice before sacrificing Haslemere's cheaper beds for mental health patients for a more expensive option elsewhere. The panel faced a barrage of questions from an audience which was also highly critical of many of the answers it received from the PCT. From personal experiences of the excellent quality of care in the Godwin Unit, to fears of what could happen if the unit closed, voiced by a physiotherapist on the ward, many thought the proposals ill thought out and believed them to be false economy. Local GP Dr Phil Ridsdill-Smith issued a warning on the cost-effectiveness of cutting hospital beds. "I think this will financially wreck us as well as our hospitals." Concluding the meeting, South West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt told the audience: "I am bitterly disappointed that a group of people who have given so much to the NHS have put their names to such a flawed document. "We have come here because we are worried about what you are doing. "We have to strengthen, not weaken, community hospitals and people are worried that the effect of closing community hospital beds will mean that more people will need to go to the Royal Surrey Hospital," said Mr Hunt, stressing the central location of Haslemere, with its easy transport links for friends and relatives combined with the benefit of having doctors' surgeries next door. "The timing of this consultation could not be more wrong with a document where the only option is to choose which hospital to close. "The PCTs are about to be abolished and not one of them will be accountable for mistakes made. "There is a real risk of this plan going wrong because patients could suffer." He implored, to unanimous agreement and applause: "Please think hard and scrap this consultation." As they left the hall, members of the audience were asked to write down what they thought was of prime importance in the current situtation. "No change is not an option," they were told. A further meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 7, in Haslemere. The venue has been changed to Wispers School hall, High Lane, Haslemere, at 7-30 pm to allow people unable to attend the afternoon meeting last week to put their views to Jane Dale from the PCT. A march for Haslemere Hospital takes place on Saturday, February 25, at 2 pm from Lion Green, Haslemere. Campaigners will walk to Haslemere Hospital, expecting to arrive shortly before 3 pm. Speakers will be Jeremy Hunt MP and the chairman of Haslemere Hospital League of Friends, Dr Nicky Lee. The consultation runs until February 28 with the outcome of the consultation to be published and discussed at a meeting held in public on March 23, the venue for which is still to be decided.
