Future Fit: Rural Shropshire areas will get urgent care
A plan is being drawn up to provide urgent health care in rural areas of Shropshire.
Health officials have started work on proposals that will provide care in outlying areas of the county including Ludlow, Bridgnorth, Bishop's Castle, Whitchurch and Oswestry.
There are no plans to build new dedicated urgent care centres in any of the towns.
Officials behind the Future Fit programme overseeing the shake-up of healthcare in the county will announce a prototype this summer with a view to implementing it later this year.
A meeting of Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group was being held today at 11am at Shirehall to discuss the proposals again.
It comes days after North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said he wanted the bulk of care currently undertaken by the A&E departments at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital delivered in urgent care centres in market towns.
Dr Stephen James, Shropshire CCG GP board member and clinical director, said: "We know that not enough people can access urgent care close to their home in rural Shropshire and parts of Mid Wales.
"We want to enhance the range of services people can get without travelling to a hospital and we also want to make those services more accessible and easier to understand. There will not be a 'one size fits all' approach.
"We will work with partners, including patients, GPs, the community trust and Shropdoc, in each area and work out how we can tailor a solution for each location, beginning with the prototype, which we aim to start detailed work on very soon."
Options will include increased access to diagnostic testing in rural areas.
David Evans, Shropshire CCG's interim accountable officer, said: "There is a lot of work being undertaken in each of the five localities. We are quite clear that the solution we are looking for should have local input and local support."
