The Evening News has long been a critic of the changes happening in Worcestershire's health service. We could have repeated our concerns today. Instead, we step aside and offer you an open letter to Harold Musgrove, chairman of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, from a Worcester resident whose partner is among those trying to keep the system going:

HAVING been born in Worcester, and lived my life here so far, I believe many thousands of city people are entitled to explanations and assurances from you personally on the future of the health service.

It's common knowledge that the new hospital will have fewer beds than we have at present. This figure has been put at between 80 and 130. The number is not important. The fact that there will be fewer beds is vital.

How can you keep insisting there will be sufficient beds when there aren't sufficient now. We've gone through spring, summer and autumn with staff struggling to accommodate patients, even, I'm told, going as far as Hereford and Gloucester for help.

What happens when the winter pressures are upon us? Will we have to be admitted to Coventry, Bristol, or even Cornwall?

The opening of the Medical Assessment Unit was going to ease the situation. I understood an assessment unit was just that, somewhere patients could be assessed for discharge or admission to a "bed" in the appropriate ward.

Sadly, the MAU's no more than a ward on wheels, an extension of A&E. After all, there are no beds in the Unit. They're trolleys, with wheels! Patients are being admitted to the Unit and many have to spend the night on these trolleys as no beds are available.

The proposed changes to the present system have been made with little or no regard to the people of the county. Why can't all services (discounting highly specialist ones) be available in all hospitals?

Why, if I suffer urological or cold orthopaedic problems, must I have to go to Redditch? If my friends wish to visit me, they'll have a round trip of 80 minutes by car. If my uncle in Malvern wishes to visit, he'll be travelling for almost two hours in total. It's ridiculous.

One accepts that, to a certain degree, the Trust has to be run as a business. It could be run efficiently and economically if the people at the sharp end - surgeons, doctors and senior nurses - were given more of an input. At the moment, everything revolves around the PFI with the accent on 'F' for Finance.

Worcester people have waited a long, long time for their new hospital. We expect and deserve a hospital that will meet our needs. If we're ill in our city, we expect to be admitted to our hospital, not to be found a bed in another county because we have none. The old saying is ever true: You can't put a quart into a pint pot.

I urge you, Mr Musgrove. Get your head out of the sand. Listen to the professionals. Listen to your staff who say you have it wrong. It's no disgrace to admit to a mistake. Only a fool goes blindly on.

Don't be remembered as the Iron Man. Let it be said "this gentleman was for turning". Please act, now.