NHS has shrinking ambitions for Hemel Hospital
Just five years ago, local NHS bosses planned a big future for Hemel’s Hospital
In 2021, West Herts NHS Trust set out their ambitions for a real specialist planned care Hospital at Hemel, to serve all of West Hertfordshire
A Trust document quotes a consultant as promising ‘Great hospital care‘ at Hemel
But now the limit of the Trust’s ambition is to build the small Market Square Health Centre
In 2021, the document said the NHS aim was for Hemel Hospital to:
- be a centre of excellence for people across West Herts who have long term and/or multiple conditions.
- have a new and unique purpose as the site for specialist planned medical care for the whole area
- become the Trust’s site for specialist diabetes and rheumatology
The NHS trumpeted Hemel’s proud role in the area’s healthcare because:
- Tens of thousands of patients every year will benefit from our plans to transform how this site works.
Just over five years later, the NHS has ditched its ambitions for our town to be a ‘centre for excellence’ in specialist planned medical care for the 600,000 people of West Herts
Today, it wants us to welcome its slimmed-down plans – for a purely local ‘neighbourhood health centre’ to serve the town of Hemel alone.
The Market Square health centre would emphasise important GP, prevention and community services, but there would be only a small amount of room for any specialist secondary services.
The plan now is certainly to ‘transform how the [Hospital] site works’
By demolishing the whole of the current Hospital and using the site for housing
The Trust’s document, ‘Your Care, Your Views’, is below. See pages 20-24:
Your Care Your Views full version