GP speaks out after fresh calls for new Horsham hospital

Dr Matt Greenwood said account had to be taken of the reality of funding and staffing a new hospital, along with the population it would serve.

Dr Greenwood, a GP at Horsham’s Courtyard Surgery, said modern hospitals needed scale to be able to provide high quality services.

"Hospitals typically cover populations of 300,000 and larger,” he said. “Even the larger town of Crawley would struggle to justify a hospital in the modern health setting.”

He said it was wrong to suggest that patients needing emergency care currently had to travel an average of 45 minutes to get to Redhill or Worthing hospitals. “East Surrey Hospital is 36 minutes by car and less by a blue light.”

He added: “What Horsham does need is more primary care infrastructure to enable better local care for patients and avoiding the need to go to hospital in the first place.

"There are local plans being worked on to increase the NHS care delivery in Horsham which will improve this situation for the future.”

Those plans are being drawn up by NHS Sussex, an organisation formed last year encompassing the former Horsham and Mid Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group which is responsible for paying for medical services in the area.

It is part of a wider group known as Sussex Health and Care – which includes all former local commissioning groups – which is finalising what it calls a ‘Shared Delivery Plan.’

It says its priorities are introducing a joint approach by community teams, growing and developing medical staff and improving the use of digital technology.

It says it recognises that it needs to increase access to GPs, improve 999 response times, reduce A&E waiting times, cut diagnostic and planned care waiting lists and accelerate patient care and discharge from hospitals.

It aims to have recruited an additional 245 staff by March next year.

Sussex Health and Care, in a statement today (Thursday) said: “At the start of the year, primary care was identified as one of the key areas of focus for health and care partners in Sussex this year – and ongoing work has been making progress to improve the way people can access care and support at their local GP practice.

“Working with GP practices, we are expanding practice teams, investing in new and advanced telephony systems to make it easier to contact your GP practice, and offering innovative services to meet patients’ needs.”

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Amy Galea, chief primary care officer at NHS Sussex said: “We have been listening to patients and our communities and recognise that access to services at general practices is an absolute priority for local people.

"GP practices in Sussex are committed to supporting their patients, and whilst they work to respond to continued high demand for their services, there has been much work to respond to the challenges people have shared with us and improve people’s experiences and access to timely help and support.”