Recent meetings to update people across west Hertfordshire on work by local NHS organisations to refresh plans for future hospital developments have been well attended and a further public engagement event is planned for early January.

The meetings explained that West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Herts Valleys CCG are taking another look at plans and funding requirements for developing hospital services in west Hertfordshire following feedback from regulators.

After reviewing the strategic outline case NHS Improvement indicated that there is a clear case for investment but in view of pressures on national budgets they want to see further work on the plans to make sure proposals are affordable and sustainable.

Residents heard that the Trust and CCG are using the need to do a refresh as an opportunity to comprehensively examine a range of options for the location and configuration of future hospital services.

Options will be examined by evaluation panels that will take place in January.  These panels will examine a range of options from various aspects including patient care, accessibility and how they complement other parts of the health and care system locally. The panels will include four patient and public representatives and people are being invited to put themselves forward for these roles. Find out more here.

In view of the level of interest shown at the recent events, the Trust and CCG will hold another public engagement event in early January. This will allow people to see some of the information that will be considered by the evaluation panels and gather feedback and questions that can be fed into the panel process by the patient and public representatives. Details of this event will be announced very soon.

See the slides from the engagement events here.