THE new £19m treatment centre at Kidderminster Hospital prompts some irresistible observations today.

Chief among them is that the site will now be used even more intensively than was intended when the bulk of it was closed under the controversial Investing in Excellence strategic health review.

That will not be lost on Wyre Forest MP Dr Richard Taylor, who won his seat on a Health Concern ticket, or the thousands whose lives were made more difficult by the closure.

Nor is it lost on the organisation itself. Its muted welcome is understandable.

While the north of Worcestershire used to have comprehensive facilities on its doorstep, the new centre will be shared with patients from across the Midlands.

It's hardly a return to what the community there regards as a right, a local service to meet the needs of a large and widely-spread population.

Though responsibility for that no longer existing lies squarely with county health bureaucrats, we can't blame them for this latest move, however.

The Government's new way of dealing with growing waiting lists - if we wait, another initiative will doubtless soon follow - compounds the misery of illness by asking patients to travel miles for treatment.

As happened with the county's concentration of specialisms at Worcester's Royal Hospital and Redditch's Alexandra Hospital, a result of Investing in Excellence, the disruption to people's lives at a time of great trauma is significant.

This never appears to strike the architects of such schemes as being important. It's about time that changed.