Llanelli Online received an email recently, which claims that there were nine options being discussed by Hywel Dda University Health Board regarding major changes to hospitals in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. .
The email from an anonymous source stated: “All options meant closing some hospitals. Withybush to be planned care only taking away their A&E not even minor injuries. Another to close Glangwili and build a new hospital that does everything with Prince Philip and Withybush just doing planned just planned care. Seven community care centres dotted around. There will be a public consultation in March. There are more big moves in the offing. Not very encouraging.
“Hugh Evans commented on NHS Status restoration group needs to be looked at. Hope if there are any politicians looking at this page that they will look again at Hugh Evans post, a consultant surgeon and think twice about Hywel Dda clerks and Welsh Assembly politicians ideas forget your party and fight for Llanelli Ammanford and districts not to mention Pembrokeshire.
“The cash they have spent on relocating services from areas where they were working perfectly to Carmarthen has cost multi millions and the service has become poorer. They now want to waste all that waste and spend more again on a big new hospital. It defies all common sense.”
Hywel Dda University Health Board recently revealed that they will present the public with preferred options to transform community and hospital services this spring.
In a statement released on Friday (Jan 19) the Health Board said: “The Health Board is proposing change so that it can make the most of every opportunity to improve population health and health services locally, as well as face its challenges and ensure services are the safest and highest value they can be for communities in mid and west Wales.
“Following engagement with the public in summer 2017, potential options are currently being discussed, tested and narrowed down by the Health Board, in conjunction with doctors, nurses, wider staff groups, people who help provide care, patient representatives and partners.
“All potential options, which are clinically-led, consider significant change to the status quo and focus on improving the health of the local population and transferring more hospital services into the community where appropriate. Some consider whether hospitals need to take on different roles, or even need to be replaced.
“A fewer number of preferred options will be released publicly in the spring, when the Health Board is confident they are viable, safe and an improvement on what is currently provided.”
Plaid Cymru, Mid and West AM, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Simon Thomas said:
“These leaked documents once again call into question the commitment of the Labour government into providing a health service for rural Wales and in the west.
“Hywel Dda health bosses appear obsessed with service change and re-organisation rather than getting on with the job of running health services. It’s only a few years since the last set of major changes, justified on the grounds of ‘sustainability’ and allegedly for the long term.
“Now once again the board are considering more changes, like a gambling addict convinced just one more bet will solve their problems. Trying to have a health service with no hospitals locally is something no other country would even attempt, but that doesn’t appear to stop this relentless ideology of pretending you can deal with an elderly population by substituting hospital beds in exchange for a few extra community health staff with ipads.
“Plaid Cymru have a long-term health plan to recruit more doctors and nurses for the Welsh NHS including our hospital services.”
Plaid Cymru AM Simon Thomas has tabled an emergency question in the National Assembly to seek answers from the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Vaughan Gething.
