Health leaders set to make decision on hospital improvements
Health leaders are set to make a decision on proposals to invest £500 million to improve hospitals for more than 700,000 people in Surrey, Sutton, and Merton.
The Improving Healthcare Together Committees in Common will meet virtually due to coronavirus social distancing rules on Friday 3 July 2020, from 11am – 2pm to decide whether to locate the new specialist emergency care hospital on the Epsom, St Helier or Sutton hospital sites. They are considering feedback from the public consultation which ran from 8 January to 1 April this year alongside all other evidence which is included in the decision-making business case.
The decision- making business case has been published and is available along with the meeting agenda on the Improving Healthcare Together (IHT) website here. This follows the recent publication of independent analysis of the feedback received during the public consultation which can be found here. This revealed that on balance across all strands of the consultation Sutton received more support as the preferred site for the new facility.
Under the proposals, the majority of people will see no change to where they receive their hospital care but would be treated in buildings that meet 21st century healthcare standards.
The plans include bringing six core services together for the sickest patients needing more specialist care and births in hospital on one site in a new purpose-built specialist emergency care hospital. This will enable the hospitals to meet clinical standards and improve the quality and outcome of care for all residents.
Regardless of where the new hospital is located, at least £80 million would be invested in Epsom and St Helier hospitals, which would retain the majority of services and be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with urgent treatment centres operating at both.
Members of the public, who will be able to watch the Committees in Common meeting via a link that will be published on Wednesday, 1 July, on the IHT website, and have until 12noon on Wednesday 1 July to submit a question to the panel relating to items on the agenda. Members of the public can submit questions by:
- Emailing: hello@improvinghealthcaretogether.org.uk
- Calling: 020 3880 0271
- Texting: 07500 063191
All questions received will be shared with Committees in Common members and published on the IHT website in advance of the meeting. The questions received will be clustered by theme. The Committees in Common Convenor will select a question from each cluster that is most representative of the issues. Only one question would be selected from any individual or on behalf of any organisation to allow the consideration of as many questions as possible within the time allocated.
