GP superhub pause ‘fantastic news for local people’ says health campaigner
The recent NHS England announcement to pause the GP superhub pilot has been hailed as ‘fantastic news for local people’
26 Mar 2023
Shrewsbury Health Hub decision must be made in public
30 Jan 2023
Liberal Democrat councillors pledge to campaign against decision being mad behindclosed doors and for Shropshire Council to keep public in the loop. NHS bosses have now confirmed that members of the public and patients will not have a say which of the ten secret sites Shrewsbury's new health hub will be located at. Shropshire Council will have a shortlist presented at late March’s council meeting with the public excluded.
Local health leadership (Gareth Robinson, Director for Transformation at the ICS) also retracted previous statements that the Health Hub would also be a Diagnostic Centre for Shrewsbury and Shropshire, stating that any new facilities would principally be for patients of the 6 GP Practices due to move and the 2 other Practices originally involved in the plans. In the same statement, Mr Robinson said that Telford and Wrekin had secured funding for a brand new Diagnostic Centre for Telford residents, but declined to reveal the amount of money involved.
Local health campaigners and Liberal Democrat councillors have pledged to fight the decision to make such a fundamental choice behind closed doors, arguing for full public involvement in the process. Save Our GP Surgeries campaigner and Liberal Democrat Councillor Alex Wagner said: “Once again, our leadership is not getting the message. The public have been very clear on this - they demand to be consulted on every aspect of the superhub, with an option not to proceed. NHS bosses say the public on’t need to have a say on the decision as it is a matter of fact. They seem to give less
weight to the matter of fact that hundreds or thousands of local people will find it harder to access basic healthcare if their decision goes ahead."
Former NHS consultant Bernie Bentick added: “And so we are losing our local GP practices and not even gaining a diagnostic centre. It is a total betrayal of the feedback that local NHS bosses have received time and time again, imploring them to think again and provide Primary Care services locally, in the communities that they currently serve, not in a huge, remote impersonal edifice. The issues here are multifold. Car parking has not been fully acknowledged as an issue and nor has public transport access. They repeat they will have a weighting process, but have declined to give details. The decision-making process seems to be weighted on individual decisions rather than any objective standards - what they say goes. That is not good enough for residents.”
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