Maternity services now face the axe... (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Maternity services now face the axe...

MATERNITY units in west and north Wiltshire look to be under threat as a cash-starved health trust admits it will no longer run the service.

At a joint meeting with Kennet & North Wilts PCT on Tuesday, West Wilts PCT said it intends to give official notice it will no longer be running the service.

This could lead the way for units at Trowbridge and Chippenham hospitals to be closed and the service centralised, possibly at the Royal United Hospital, Bath.

Jeff Osborn, chairman of the Friends of Trowbridge Hospital, said: "This is most disappointing news.

"I have been trying to find out what they are proposing to do with the maternity service and they have now come clean. They are walking away from it and I don't know who is going to pick up the pieces."

In the past PCTs have taken on specialist areas of work, providing services in a particular field, often outside of their geographical area.

West Wiltshire PCT provides maternity services in Kennet and north Wiltshire, Mendip and Bath and North East Somerset, including the Princess Anne wing at the RUH.

But the Government has introduced a new payment by results system, which means NHS service providers get paid per patient.

PCT spokesman Debbie Pugh-Jones said: "What this will mean is payment per person will be less than it costs us to provide the service.

"West Wilts PCT has said we will no longer be able to provide this service and will be looking in the future at giving 12 months notice of that decision, but that has not been given yet because we are looking at what the options are to ensure continuity of service."

The PCT will have to give notice to the other primary care trusts that it intends to stop providing the service and each one will then be responsible for ensuring replacement provision is in place.

Whether community units will remain open will then be the decision of each service provider.

Mrs Pugh-Jones said: "We are not going to stop the service until we are sure that something else is in place.

"We want to reassure mums-to-be that, obviously, there will always be a maternity service.

"It is up to the service provider how they will run that service within the costs."

Together the West Wilts and the Kennet & North Wilts PCTs are £10m in the red and are undertaking a far-reaching review of all healthcare services they provide.

Bradford on Avon Hospital has already been closed and services scaled down at Westbury amid uncertainty about the future of all community hospitals.

Shadow health minister and West Wilts MP Dr Andrew Murrison raised the closure of community hospitals with Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.