ACUTE stroke beds at Worcestershire Royal Hospital could close following a dramatic U-turn by health chiefs.

NHS bosses announced last July there were no immediate plans to close acute stroke services at either the Worcester hospital or the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch but said a central service at Worcester would be best.

But during a meeting of the health overview and scrutiny committee (HOSC) NHS chiefs said closure of acute stroke beds at Worcester was back on the table.

Five choices for the future of stroke care have been put forward:

• Keep everything as it is (acute stroke services developed at both hospitals) but additional investment would be needed.

• Centralise all acute stroke services at Worcester.

• Centralise all acute stroke services at Redditch.

• Keep some services like thrombolysis (clot-busting drugs) at both hospitals but have acute stroke beds at Worcester.

• Keep some services like thrombolysis at both hospitals but have acute stroke beds at Redditch.

In these last two options stroke patients would be transferred to acute stroke beds after initial tests and treatment in 12 to 24 hours.

Good, swift acute stroke care prevents people dying or suffering permanent disability.

There is now no 24-hour, seven-day-a-week stroke service at either site but a single service at one of the two hospitals may make it easier to provide one.

We reported last April that discussions had taken place to centralise acute stroke services in Redditch and close all 16 acute stroke beds in Worcester.

Brendan Young, then a shadow governor with Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, was alerted by a whistleblower within the organisation and spoke out against the proposal in your Worcester News.

However, health chiefs assured the public that the move to Redditch was just an “idea” and last month Dr Charles Ashton, the hospital medical director, said the preferred option was to centralise services in Worcester but that the hospital site was too overcrowded at present.

Simon Hairsnape, chief operating officer for the Wyre Forest Clinical Commissioning Group and the Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group, said at the HOSC meeting: “It was the right decision at the time. “We want to review this urgently because we haven’t made the progress we would have wanted.

“We are still not getting this right and we are still struggling to provide the highest quality. At the moment no decisions have been made at all.”

A review group will be reassembled to work out scores for each of the options before developing a new preferred option within the next three months in consultation with the public and patients.

Coun Gerry O’Donnell of HOSC said: “It seems we’re going around in a circle a bit here. I just heard you say everything is back in the melting pot.”

Coun Tony Miller of HOSC said: “We were talking about it last year. We’re still talking about it this year and all the time we’re talking, things aren’t happening.”

Rose Johnson, the hospital trust’s assistant medical director, said centralising stroke services in Worcester would involve removing other health services from the hospital to make room.