The protest against the proposed move of the NHS Walk-In Centre in Hastings town centre, out to the Conquest Hospital has persuaded local health care groups to review their plans. They have issued the following statement:
“In March this year the East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) CCGs – Hastings and Rother (HR) CCG and Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford (EHS) CCG – presented their initial proposals to improve urgent care services for local people to the East Sussex Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC).
These outlined proposals to develop Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) at our two hospitals, the Conquest in Hastings and the District General Hospital in Eastbourne. The proposals included the possibility of re-locating walk-in services from their current town centre locations to the hospitals. This was to provide the best possible service to local people through bringing together a number of services to provide an integrated and consistently high quality service that would best meet the needs of local people.
Since we presented these proposals earlier in the year we have received a range of feedback from local people and key stakeholders, and have developed a more in-depth understanding of the people who currently access our urgent primary care services.
This prompted us to re-look at our initial proposals over the summer and we are currently finalising the outcome of this review. The provision of a primary care community hub in Hastings town centre is one of the options being considered as part of the review of the CCGs’ proposals.
Whilst we conclude our review all patients registered at Hastings Medical Practice will continue to have on-going access to GP services with no break in provision of services. Local people will still be able to access walk-in services, seven days a week, from 8am-8pm. For patients already registered with a GP at our current walk-in centres, appointments continue as normal.
The ESBT CCGs expect to confirm our proposals by the end of autumn and will publicly engage on these proposals later in the year to gain feedback from local people which will be considered when finalising our plans.”
Source: NHS Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford CCG; NHS Hastings and Rother CCG
Image Credits: Rye News library .