Alexandra Hospital: Public meeting hears option for future

The meeting at the Palace Theatre in Redditch was organised by the Save the Alex Campaign

More than 200 people have attended a public meeting about the future of the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

The group taking over the commissioning of services at the hospital explained the two possible options for the hospital's future.

In the first some services, including part of A&E, would move to Worcester. In the second the Alexandra would be taken over by a Birmingham trust.

The trust running the hospital needs to save £50m by 2015.

The commissioning of services at the Alexandra Hospital will be taken over by the NHS Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in April.

'Grave doubts'

The CCG chairman Dr Jonathon Wells said: "The Birmingham option is going to be worked up over the next couple of months and will be coming out to the public again at the end of May and June to explain those options better."

Alan Greathead, who was at the meeting, said he believed a takeover by the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust was the best option as he had "grave doubts about Worcester being able to manage financially".

Another Redditch resident, Grace Motteram, said: "If we go in with Birmingham I think that would be more positive - the Alex has been open for 26 years now and we really need to keep it."

The meeting at the Palace Theatre in Redditch was organised by the Save the Alex Campaign.

Neal Stote, from the campaign, said it had spoken to more than 1,000 people about which option they preferred.

"We've been told that for those services they have to travel for they'd rather go to Birmingham rather than Worcester, and it's critical that this message comes across to those people commissioning the services," he said.