HEALTH chiefs have defended a much-delayed process to transform the way acute hospital care is delivered in Worcestershire.

Plans to save £50 million by changing how hospital services are delivered are being debated by health leaders, who say it is in patients’ benefit that they are taking their time, to ensure they get the process right.

It was hoped that a review looking at saving £50 million by reconfiguring hospital services would be complete and ready to go to public consultation before the end of last year.

But six months later the process is still not complete, with commissioners now targeting the end of July for the work to be finished.

Watchdogs at Worcestershire County Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee grilled local commissioners at County Hall this week, with Coun Tony Miller saying the lengthy and complicated process had left health service staff “disillusioned and the public feeling let down”.

But Simon Hairsnape, chief officer of Wyre Forest and Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), said the county had taken a bold decision almost 18 months ago by pressing ahead with the changes at a time when the NHS itself has been going through a massive transformation.

“The easiest thing in Worcestershire would have just been to ignore the whole problem and not start the process at all,” he said. “But we felt that would have been failing the people and we were not prepared to just stand around and watch services fall over.

“We were in the vanguard of change and that is a very difficult place to be. But however difficult this process is proving to be, it is the right thing to do.

“If not then, not next week or next month, but at some point services would have started failing simply because of our inaction.”

County clinicians are widely agreed on the future direction that acute services need to take to remain safe and sustainable, with the focus of the changes on A&E and women’s and children’s services, with operations scaled back at Redditch in favour of more centralisation at Worcester.

However, exactly how this is implemented is still up for debate, with options for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust to deliver the revised model across its three existing sites (Worcester, Redditch and Kidderminster) or for a new provider to be sought to deliver services at Redditch.

Mr Hairsnape was quizzed on why alternate, Birmingham-based providers are not being consulted over the second option as part of the review process. He said the entire option depends on the Worcestershire Acute Trust remaining clinically and financially viable operating over just two sites, and that work to establish if this is the case is still ongoing.

“There are still a number of ‘what if’ scenarios,” he said. “If, under option two, the trust is not sustainable then there is no point in discussing with alternate providers. Solving a problem for part of Worcestershire but not all, or even creating greater problems, does not take us forward.

“At the end of July we will have the outcomes of this work and we will need to decide which are viable options and how to take them forward.”

He also gave assurances that the review is focused on finding the best solution for the patients of Worcestershire, rather than “protecting” any NHS organisations such as the acute trust.