Medics return to Savernake (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Medics return to Savernake

3:00pm Friday 27th May 2011 in News By Nigel Kerton

A seven day a week out of hours doctors’ service is to be restored to Savernake Hospital.

Wiltshire Medical Services, which runs the out of hours service, admits it got it wrong by closing the weekday service at Marlborough leaving people in need of medical help with a 20 mile round trip to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

The decision has this week been welcomed by health campaigners, who tried to prevent the Monday to Friday out of hours service being moved to the Swindon hospital a year ago.

The service currently operates at Savernake on weekend mornings but from July it will be based there from 6.30pm to midnight on weekdays and from 8am to midnight at weekends.

Dr Andrew Cowie, chief executive of WMS, said: “We have been under quite a lot of pressure from the residents of Marlborough to put services into Savernake. We probably did get it a bit wrong in our initial choice of locations for bases.

“We have been surprised at the small number of people seeing us at Great Western Hospital.

“We are not quite sure why but it has swung the pendulum towards Savernake and it is certainly good news for the people of Marlborough, Pewsey and surrounding areas.

“However as a result of re-opening the weekday out of hours service at Savernake, WMS will no longer have a base at the Great Western Hospital.”

Joan Davies, a leading campaigner for maintaining or improving health services in Marlborough and a members of the Friends of Savernake Hospital, said: “We are going back to where we were a year ago which is good news.

“It seems they must have looked at the figures for the last year and decided to do this because not many people from this area were using the service at the Great Western Hospital”

Campaigner Val Compton, who has led the campaign to retain services at Savernake, said: “How very refreshing to see someone say they got it wrong. I applaud that.

“I am hugely supportive of the out of hours service returning to Savernake and this is the first step in the right direction.”

Patients wanting to access the out of hours service will first need to be assessed via a telephone triage call before being given an appointment at Savernake or, in a minority of cases, receive a home visit from a member of the medical team.