FRIENDS of Frome Hospital are appealing to residents to have their say on the town’s future medical services.
The group is seeking local feedback from the public, patients and their families, carers, staff and stakeholders on how to develop future community health and care services.
It follows a ‘Fit for my Future’ listening event at Frome Hospital last week which was headed by the NHS Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in conjunction with Somerset County Council.
The Friends of Frome Hospital said, “Even the NHS CCG admit current services are not designed for the needs of today – or the future, but we have had time to scrutinise the latest document and believe this a real opportunity to improving our community health and care services.
“Our overall aim is to ensure that we maintain the optimum medical cover here in town for the future. If we can work together as a community by voicing our opinions now, we can shape new ways to providing a service to meet our needs of today and for those of our children and grandchildren who follow.”
A spokesperson for ‘Fit for My Future’ said, “We were delighted to be at Frome Community Hospital last week to share information about our engagement on community health and care services and listen to what people had to say.
“We’d like to reassure people that this is engagement, not consultation. No decisions have been made and we do not have any preferred options in terms of how services will be provided in the future.
“We are sharing our early thinking about how health and care services in Somerset can work better together and better meet the needs of our population. We have a real opportunity to design a new way of providing care that supports people to live independent, healthier lives. We are also sharing the reasons why our current services need to change and the challenges that we face in continuing to run them in the way they currently are.
“We want people to help us shape and improve our future services. This is why we are talking to people about our opportunities and challenges and listening to their views.
“We received good feedback from patients, staff and the public who attended the listening event at Frome Community Hospital. All comments and feedback will be logged as part of our engagement programme and be independently analysed by Participate Ltd. Their independent report will be published later this year so everyone can read it.
“We know that the heavy rain may have affected some people’s attendance today. We will be back in Frome, at Frome library on Saturday 29th February between 1pm and 3pm, to listen to your views.
“People can find out more about our early thinking around improvements to community health and care services on our website at https://www.fitformyfuture.org.uk/community-services/ and give their feedback via our survey at http://bit.ly/FFMF-community-health-and-care-spring-2020”
