Hospital chiefs offer reassurances over emergency department closure

The restructuring will affect the Royal Hampshire County Hospital and Basingstoke & North Hampshire Hospital

Health bosses are seeking to reassure people they will still be able to access emergency care when Winchester's emergency department closes.

Hampshire Hospitals Trust is planning a new acute hospital at Basingstoke.

The emergency department will be based there and Winchester will get a new 24-hour urgent treatment centre (UTC) for things like fractures and burns.

Under the plans, Winchester's Royal Hampshire County Hospital would get a multimillion-pound refurbishment.

Trust chief executive Alex Whitfield said: "Two thirds of the people who come to an A&E department now would still come to the UTC and get exactly the same service.

"Serious major trauma cases don't get sent to Royal Hampshire County Hospital at the moment, because there are specialist teams at Basingstoke and Southampton."

The new hospital would cost between £700m and £900m and be funded by the government's New Hospital Building programme.

It would be built either on the site of the current Basingstoke hospital or at a new site at Dummer, off the M3's Junction 7.

Specialist consultants in heart and strokes would be based there along with an obstetrician-led maternity unit for complex births, a neo-natal unit and a cancer unit.

Dr Lara Alloway, chief medical officer for Hampshire's Integrated Care Board, said the proposals were an opportunity to make Winchester's hospital "fit for the next generations".

"Centralising some of our services will mean we'll have seven-day, consultant-led care and the buildings will be designed for those services," she said.

But Winchester MP Steve Brine said he was concerned about there no longer being consultant-led obstetric services in the city.

He said: "It's not that midwife-led maternity services are a bad thing, it's that with birth, things can go wrong very quickly."

A public consultation will be held on three options:

• A new hospital on the existing site of Basingstoke hospital

• A new hospital on a new site at junction 7 of the M3

• A new hospital on the M3, keeping a hospital on the original Basingstoke site for some appointments, step-down beds and for people who don't need acute care

The trust said although the second option was preferred it would listen to feedback.

Services are continuing to operate as normal with the restructuring expected to take 10 years.