Since June we have been talking and listening with local people about the challenges at Epsom and St Helier hospitals and some of the potential solutions to the issues around clinical standards, buildings and finances. You can read the independent engagement reports here.
As well as this early engagement work, we have recently run three further independently facilitated workshops with members of the public, NHS professionals and other experts from Surrey Downs, Sutton and Merton, to consider these potential solutions. These workshops were part of our options consideration process which is still ongoing, looking at how we address the challenges at Epsom and St Helier hospitals.
The aim of the workshops was to help us develop the criteria and weightings we should consider when scoring any potential options. Ultimately they told us what is most important to local people – things like accessibility and clinical safety – and how important each of these things are.
We have published the independent report which describes the options consideration workshops here. The options workshops scored each potential option – but importantly did not give us a preferred option. There is still a lot more work to do before we will be able to identify any preferred option/s.
The information from the options workshops is one piece of evidence that will be reviewed by the CCGs in 2019, alongside a wide range of additional evidence, including the second phase of the Integrated Impact Assessment, financial assessments, the impact on other local NHS providers and feedback from our regulators. All of this will be reviewed before we decide to go out to public consultation on any potential proposals.
No decisions about any changes to services will be made until after a full public consultation has taken place and all of the information has been considered by the CCGs.