Fit for the Future

NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group’s Governing Body has approved a number of resolutions relating to the medium and long term future of some specialist hospital services across the Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal hospital sites.

At their meeting on Thursday 18 March, members gave conscientious consideration to all of the information they were presented with, including the Fit for the Future Decision Making Business Case (DMBC).

The resolutions:

• Acute Medicine (specifically Acute Medical Take):

Centralise the Acute Medical Take at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

• Emergency General Surgery:

Centralise Emergency General Surgery at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

• Gastroenterology inpatient services:

Formalise (make permanent) the ‘pilot’ configuration (arrangements) for Gastroenterology inpatient services at Cheltenham General Hospital

• Image Guided Interventional Surgery (IGIS):

Create an Image Guided Interventional Surgery ‘Hub’ at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and a ‘Spoke’ at Cheltenham General Hospital

• Centralise Vascular Surgery at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

• Trauma and Orthopaedic (T&O) inpatient services:

Formalise (make permanent) the ‘pilot’ configuration (arrangements) for Trauma at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Orthopaedics at Cheltenham General Hospital

• Planned General Surgery:

Governing Body members also approved a resolution that recommends that further work is done to define a new option to deliver Planned General Surgery across the Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital sites. Local people and staff will be given the opportunity to be involved in this work.

The Governing Body meeting and consideration of the DMBC followed the consultation review period, where Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the CCG looked in detail at the output of public and staff consultation, the Citizens’ Jury reports and public, staff and stakeholder comments following publication of additional information.

The staff and public consultation was quality assured and has been assessed as ‘good practice’ by The Consultation Institute.

Clinical Chair of NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, Dr Andy Seymour said:

“We know the development of specialist hospital services in the county are of significant importance to patient care and governing body members carefully considered all of the information they were presented with before reaching decisions.

We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the Fit for the Future programme over the course of the last few years, in particular community partners, members of the public and staff who have played such an active role in feeding in their perspectives and views through both the engagement and consultation process and have helped shape local services for the future.”

The implementation of the recommendations will be completed in stages over the next two to three years. Read more here

The DMBC sets out proposed resolutions for the medium and long term future of a number of specialist hospital services following the Fit for the Future consultation:

• Acute Medicine (specifically acute medical take)
• Emergency General Surgery
• Gastroenterology inpatient services
• Image Guided Interventional Surgery (IGIS) including Vascular Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic (T&O) inpatient services.
  

The DMBC can be found here.

The publication of the DMBC follows the consultation review period, where Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group looked in detail at the output of consultation report, the Citizens’ Jury reports and public, staff and stakeholder comments following publication of additional information all of which can be found here

There is now an opportunity for the public, staff and stakeholders to comment on additional information prior to decision making in March 2021. Deadline for feedback is 25 February 2021. See here.

A Citizens’ Jury took place via Zoom from 19-22 January and 25-28 January from 1pm-5.30pm each day. The Jury considered the feedback from the consultation and will involved independently recruited jurors, who were representative of our diverse local communities. You can view further information on the Jury here or by following the links on the right.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to provide feedback during this consultation. We have read all of your responses and these have been published as part of the Interim Output of Consultation report.

If you register on Get Involved in Gloucestershire, you will receive notification of additional up-coming events and the publication of the reports.