WEST HERTS TRUST’S EMPTY PROMISES CAN’T BE BELIEVED
Pledges of better and expanded services made by the West Herts Trust to the people of Dacorum less than four years ago have been exposed as empty promises.
- Ambitious and heavily-promoted investment plans for Hemel Hempstead Hospital publicised in 2021 have been drastically scaled back
- The costs of rebuilding Watford General have soared out of control
- Watford General’s demands have drained away all the money Hemel expected to get from the national New Hospital Programme
- IN 2021, THE TRUST SAID, IN A ‘YOUR CARE YOUR VIEWS’, PAPER THAT HEMEL HOSPITAL WOULD:
– ‘have a new and unique purpose as the site for specialist planned medical care site for people in west Hertfordshire’
– ‘broaden its range and volume of care for people with long term conditions’
– ‘expand outpatient services for paediatrics, respiratory, cardiology and dermatology’
– ‘be the location for an increasing number of ‘one stop’ clinics.’
- NOW – None of these promises of expanded services is likely to be kept
– Hemel Hospital is facing likely closure, with the land going to housing
– all or some of the remaining services will move across the road to a Health Campus or Hub in the Market Square in the Marlowes.
– Hospital services will flatline – as our population ages and grows with much more housing
– No guarantee that Hemel’s urgent treatment centre, dealing with 50,000 cases a year, will survive the move
-The Council’s draft local plan is very unambitious. It just says that the Campus would provide ‘hospital and other specialist facilities that serve the wider needs of the town, and general practice facilities to meet the rising demand in the immediate area’
- If the Campus does not provide expanded services it won’t properly serve the needs of Dacorum for the long-term future