Perhaps we should camp out on site

This coalition government is embarking, in a chaotic way, on a massive and expensive top-down reorganisation of the NHS. It seeks to replace primary care trusts (PCTs) with GP commissioning groups – doing the same job, but in a different place, with different geographical boundaries.

Just as PCTs do at present, they will use the budget allocated to them to purchase primary health services for us. Are these politicians seriously suggesting that the PCT about to be abolished is likely to make a decision to build a new hospital?

We did not get the new hospital under the last Labour government when funding was more generous. Although this coalition is not cutting health budgets in cash terms, in real terms, the cutbacks required will be massive because both prices and demand are soaring.

Some health trusts are forecast to have problems paying staff by the end of the financial year. Will any commissioning group or PCT faced with such pressures build a new facility?

I would make the following suggestions. We should see whether a new medical centre incorporating several medical practices is the way forward instead. This could provide most of the new facilities we are after, minus inpatient beds, which, with the trend towards community nursing at home, we may not need.

The rehabilitation beds at Zachary Merton Hospital, Rustington, could remain and we could have a new, modern medical centre offering a one-stop shop for minor injuries, x-rays, blood tests and specialist clinics including for sexually-transmitted diseases and physiotherapy, funded by bringing a few medical practices together, and perhaps subsidised by building flats above.

It is easy for local politicians to launch campaigns for things when they do not have the responsibility for making the decision. Perhaps we need to look afresh at the whole idea – and perhaps we should camp out on the earmarked site, just in case it goes up for sale to help bail out the NHS.

Derrick Chester

Worthing Road

Wick