HEALTH chiefs have come in for renewed criticism about their plans to radically alter local health services and to close hospital beds. The Guildford and Waverley Primary Care Trust (PCT) is currently in the final stages of its public consultation "Modernising Your Local Healthcare" which contains proposals to close local hospital beds and alter health services provided at Farnham, Haslemere, Milford and Cranleigh hospitals as the PCT bids to save costs and avoid a financial crisis. Last Thursday, Surrey County Council's health scrutiny committee (HSC), an independent health watchdog with the power to refer health issues to the Secretary of State for Health, met the board of the PCT in Godalming to discuss the public consultation document. HSC members questioned the PCT board members about the motives for its proposals to cut community health services in the wake of a government White Paper released last week promoting community care and comments by the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who urged PCTs to rethink their community hospital closure plans, particularly when they were being put forward as a cost- saving measure. The HSC also wanted to know why the public consultation is going ahead when there is so much uncertainty over the reshaping of PCTs throughout the country. This could mean that the Guildford and Waverley PCT could be reconfigured into a Surrey PCT - a new organisation which could decide to deal with the impending financial crisis differently. At the end of meeting, the HSC urged the PCT to delay its consultation and to rethink its proposals to cut local health services. "At the meeting, the committee heard a number of criticisms about various aspects of the consultation document from a number of different sources," said a spokesman for HSC. "The committee believed that many of the criticisms about the lack of detail in the document were justified and will take this into account when formulating its final response. "From a scrutiny point of view there was not enough information in the document about the health quality outcomes and improvements that the proposals are aimed to achieve, or processes by which they would be measured in order to provide clear evidence of that health improvement. "The stated timeline for making a decision on this matter was given as a board meeting on March 23. The committee does not feel it was reasonable to expect the PCT to provide additional information to the committee and then to receive a response from the committee within the time available. "In summary, the committee found it would be difficult to make recommendations to the PCT board based on the information presently available. It preferred more time in which to complete its work and to gather further evidence and listen to the views of staff and stakeholders, especially GPs and the finance director. "It occurred to the committee that the PCT might welcome a period of reflection itself, bearing in mind the complexity of these proposals, and their impact on local people, and taking into account also the implications of the White Paper and what it has to say on the subject of community hospitals." While the HSC has asked the PCT to delay its proposals, local MP Jeremy Hunt believes that the PCT should abandon the plans completely. "It is clear that the PCT has seriously misjudged the local community's commitment to saving its community and rehabilitation services, said the South West Surrey MP. "Its consultation also appears to pre-empt the government's White Paper, which calls for the local community's views to be taken into account before any decision is made on the closure of community hospital services. "To make matters worse, the PCT has then failed to clearly work through its own proposals and provide its local community and HSC with enough detail for them to be able choose between the options. The only choice left is for the PCT to abandon its consultation."
