The recent debate about which Hospitals may or may not be under threat has drawn attention away from the issue. That is that while creating regional centres of excellence may make sense for the treatment of ailments that do not require an emergency response, but to do the same for Accident and Emergency and Maternity services is madness.
In Oxted, we used to have a local district hospital but now, in common with vast swathes of East Surrey and Mid Sussex, the nearest A&E is in Redhill. Now if traffic is fine (ie no problem on the nearby M25) then the journey will take around 20-25 minutes, but when problems flare up (which they do frequently) then the journey will take much much longer. In a life threatening situation where every minute counts, this is just too far and when combined with the withdrawal of locally based out of hours GP cover then it really does increase the risk that residents will not receive vital treatment in time.
What we need is a return to locally based care. As a first step the Government could at least reassure us that existing provision (like Worthing Hospital, which was recently rebuilt at a huge cost) will not be closed in some bureaucratically dictated move to centralise 'care'.
