Healthy Weston is the vision for joining up services for better care in Weston-super-Mare, Worle and surrounding areas. This includes the future for services at Weston General Hospital.
The vision was developed by local health and care partners talking and listening to staff, stakeholders, patients, carers and the public about providing the best possible health and care services suitable for people’s needs and sustainable – for the long-term.
Local people’s current and future needs are changing and there is increasing demand on local services as well as wide variation in people’s health and life chances.
Delivering Healthy Weston will mean that we can support people to stay well and care for people closer to home in a joined-up way across different services. And when people do need specialist hospital treatment, we will be able to provide the highest quality care and then help patients get home again quickly, as soon as they are well enough.
To do this we have been looking closely at how existing services are organised and delivered and how they could work together to provide better joined-up care for patients. This will also help ensure services are delivered to national quality standards and can be provided within available funding.
To achieve our ambition for Weston General Hospital and design our exemplar local hospital our clinicians are following a robust and thorough process.
There are five principal stages:
Stage One: In October 2017 we published the Healthy Weston Commissioning Context, and undertook our co-design work with local people.
Stage Two: We reviewed and analysed evidence to develop and discuss potential clinical designs for new ways of delivering care to meet changing needs.
Stage Three: We ran a formal public consultation on the proposals for change between February and June 2019.
Stage Four: Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG’s Governing Body considered all available evidence and approved the final proposals.
Stage Five: Implementation of any changes. This stage will require detailed planning and delivery. Implementation may take several years.
The formal consultation period closed on Friday 14 June 2019. All the feedback has now been analysed by an independent organisation and a report produced summarising the responses. This is available here.
All the evidence gathered from the review and the public consultation was taken into account in the development of a Decision-Making Business Case (DMBC), which set out recommended next steps. On Monday 30th September, the document received public scrutiny from the North Somerset Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel. On Tuesday 1st October, its recommendations for the future shape of services at Weston Hospital were approved by Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG’s Governing Body.
