As commissioners of healthcare across Surrey Downs, Sutton and Merton, we are clear that we must ensure that the needs of our populations are met and support improved health of our populations, both currently and in the future. This includes rapid access for urgent care needs, consistency in care for long-term conditions and access to specialists for the sickest patients or those most at risk.
To meet these needs, we have a vision for future healthcare:
- Preventing illness, including both preventing people becoming sick and preventing illness getting worse.
- Integrating care for those patients who need care frequently and delivering this integrated care as close to patients’ homes as possible.
- Ensuring high quality major acute services by setting clear standards for the delivery of major acute emergency, paediatric and maternity services.
We want the best for our patients. We know that our local hospitals, Epsom and St Helier, are facing problems with quality of services, buildings and finance. Despite the hard work and commitment of staff, the hospitals are not able to meet all the necessary quality standards we would expect to see. We want to solve these problems and to do this we have created a new clinical model to change how hospital care is provided in the future.
Over the last two years we have worked with doctors, nurses, clinical staff and local people to develop a new way of working, which formed the basis of the development of our proposals.
We want our local hospitals to continue to be safe for local people, attract expert staff, and care for our patients in modern, state-of-the art buildings.