Community Hospital

South Molton Community Hospital

The NHS organisation* (Clinical Commissioning Group or CCG) responsible for commissioning various local NHS services, including beds in community hospitals,  published a paper on Wednesday 17 September 2014 outlining various options for the future of community hospital beds in northern Devon.

Six different options were given for each of three different scenarios. The scenarios relate to the total of number of community hospital beds in the district. In the scenario with the most beds (56), South Molton Community Hospital features in three out of the six options. In the other scenarios it only features twice.

You can download the consultation document by right clicking here.

A document on the CCG’s wider strategic vision about community services can be downloaded by right clicking here.

All the initial  public consultation events have been held.  I attended all of them to find out exactly what was proposed and to ensure that the particular circumstances of South Molton were properly taken into account.

South Molton Town Councillors and members of the South Molton Community Hospital sent a letter to Dr Womersley, chair of the local CCG, raising concerns about the proposal to close beds in South Molton.

I took a somewhat different approach, in that I carefully researched issues like travel times by public transport and  car, the increase in housing in South Molton etc. and sent these directly to the CCG for consideration. I’ve also been attending the northern Devon CCG board meetings (which are open to members of the public) to keep an eye on what’s happening so that I can raise relevant questions if necessary.

Until I contacted them the CCG had been unaware of the large numbers of houses proposed for South Molton or the fact that a number of the developments had already received planning permission.

The CCG have taken account of this new (to them) information, They are currently in the process of determining how many beds will be required and will then determine where those beds should be.

The whole decision making process will go into limbo until after the elections have been held and a new government formed.

Once the final numbers and locations of beds has been determined the whole issue will again go out to public consultation with a final decision not expected until December 2016.

The CCG have published a summary of the findings of the consultation events and this can either be downloaded from the CCG website or directly from here.

* NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group or NEW Devon CCG.

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