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Survey deadline extended – still time to share your views!

Posted: 23 March 2021

Your Care, Your Views leflet

The deadline for completing the online survey for the public to share their views about changes to hospital services has been extended until midnight on Sunday March 28.

West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been running a programme of public engagement Your Care, Your Views which has included around 20 meetings where local people have heard and asked questions about new ways of delivering patient care across the trust’s three hospitals. An online survey is part of this engagement.

Recordings of public meetings, where senior clinicians have talked and answered questions about the proposals are available on the trust’s YouTube channel. So far, around 648 have joined the meetings or caught up with them online.

At the heart of the proposals – set out in Your Care, Your Views – is the aim to give each of the trust’s three hospitals a unique purpose along these lines:

All three sites will provide urgent care services and will benefit from new diagnostic facilities.

The trust’s chief medical officer, Dr Mike van der Watt, said: "I want to thank our busy clinicians for making the time to develop the proposals we have been sharing throughout our engagement programme. Despite the pressures of the pandemic, we have had great engagement and it's clear how committed our staff are to making our services the best they can be. We have reviewed the latest best practice from this country and abroad and have used that as well as national policy and our own ideas to create a vastly improved way of delivering patient care from our three hospitals.

"I am excited by our plans which are about so much more than buildings and beds. The quality and safety of our services and the clinical outcomes we want for our patients have been our guiding force."

On extending the survey deadline, deputy chief executive Helen Brown, said: "Our engagement so far has thrown up lots of questions about how the proposed new buildings can fit on the Watford site. People have also asked about disruption whilst building works are ongoing. We have released a short film and we hope that it helps people understand where new buildings could go and that the majority of the construction will take place away from our current patient areas."

The film is available to view online and detailed information about all the proposals outlined in the engagement is available on the trust’s website.

The Outline Planning Application for Watford General Hospital is scheduled for submission in Spring 2021 and a virtual public exhibition will run from Friday 26 March to Friday 23 April. The public are invited to comment on the draft proposals during this period via an online questionnaire.

There are also three public meetings taking place on Friday 26 March, Wednesday 31 March and Tuesday 20 April. Further details, meeting links and feedback questionnaire details are available on BDP’s website.

The planning process for Watford General Hospital is a longer process so work on this site more advanced. Further details about Hemel Hempstead and St Albans City hospitals will be available at a later stage. The order in which buildings and sites are rebuilt and refurbished is yet to be decided.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

  1. For more information, please contact the communications team on: 01923 436280 or email: westherts.communications@nhs.net. For out of hours media enquiries please call the Watford General Hospital switchboard on 01923 244366 and ask for the on call communications manager.
  2. West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust serves people from across Hertfordshire, north London and further afield. It operates from three hospitals; Watford General, St Albans City and Hemel Hempstead. The trust has a catchment area of over 500,000 people and is one of the largest employers locally, with around 5,000 staff and volunteers.
  3. For more information about our hospitals, visit www.westhertshospitals.nhs.uk. You can also join our followers on Twitter (twitter.com/westhertsNHS) and find us on Facebook (facebook.com/westhertsNHS).