The future of the Minor Injury Unit at Ross Community Hospital is once more in doubt as the health organisations which serve patients in Herefordshire and Worcestershire have to come up with suggestions to bridge a funding gap of £336m.

Herefordshire and Worcestershire NHS Services have been working on a draft Sustainability and Transformation Plan as they to work out how to continue to deliver a health service to a vast, rural area with less resources.

The report acknowledges that spending allocations will increase from £1.168bn to £1.327bn over the next five years. However it points out that if the population continues to access services in the same way as now, and they are provided in the same way, then spending will be likely to increase by an additional £175m over and above this. When added to their opening gap and the social care gap, this results in the total financial challenge for the system by the end of 2020/21 of £336m.

Dr Simon Lennane, a GP in Ross-on-Wye, told the Ross Gazette “We are still waiting to see the detail from the STP. Bed closures remains a significant threat across the county, but we are firm believers in the value of our local hospital, and fully intend to make the case for keeping this excellent resource running for our patients. Herefordshire already has relatively few beds for our population, and community beds in particular are an convenient and cost-effective way of providing care close to home.”

The draft contains many suggestions and also emphasises the need to encourage residents to live healthier lives.

There is also a committment to carers as Herefordshire and Worcestershire NHS Services say they appreciate the vital role they play and they say that they have completely adopted and embraced the principle of “home first” and will deliver as many services as possible close to home and reduce, as far as possible, the need for people to travel out of their area to access most services. Some services will be brought out into communities and delivered in GP surgeries, community hospitals or other local premises.

As part of their review of urgent services they will look at the number of individual physical access points to urgent care services but will retain three units with an A&E function. They will explore the need for the number of MIUs and the Walk in Centre and explore whether they should reduce the number of community based beds across the system.

This is just a draft report and after it was published on November 22nd the authors of the report said that they hope to facilitate discussions which will involve the wider community. They are proposing to hold an open event in the New Year.For more information abut the STP, see next week's edition of the Ross Gazette, out on Wednesday, November 29th, for the full report.