No decisions have been made about the
future for A&E at Weston General Hospital and any permanent significant changes
to services would be subject to full public consultation.
The overnight closure of the hospital’s A&E
remains a temporary measure.
Over the coming months, further work
will continue to refine our proposals for the provision of urgent and emergency
care services in North Somerset including A&E services at Weston, and we
plan to publish our proposals in the autumn.
Together with Weston Area Health NHS Trust,
which runs Weston Hospital, we want to make sure people in North Somerset have
access to safe, high quality, sustainable urgent and emergency care services,
as close to home as possible.
Patients with life threatening emergencies and injuries, such as a massive stroke, heart attack or major trauma have always gone to larger, more specialist hospitals in Bristol and Taunton for treatment rather than to Weston and this will continue going forward.
This is part of a wider programme called 'Healthy Weston: joining up services for better care in the Weston area', which is looking at how our existing services can work better together to provide greater joined-up care for patients and how some services could be delivered differently in the future to make this happen.
In relation to urgent and emergency care this includes looking at alternative ways of offering care locally to patients traditionally seen in A&E without the need to admit them via an A&E department, and at the types of urgent and emergency services best provided by Weston or by neighbouring hospitals in Bristol and Taunton.