All of the evidence we are gathering on clinical models, travel, deprivation, equalities and the impact on other providers, plus feedback from staff and the public will feed into the next steps, the options consideration process.
This process helps us to appraise potential solutions in meeting the challenges we face in our combined geographies.
The options consideration process consists of three separate workshops, independently facilitated.
We will recruit members of the public to these workshops to represent the range of people who will be affected by any proposed solution. This will include service users, particularly representing maternity, paediatric, emergency and district services. It will also include people with protected characteristics who may be affected, including age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, carers and those living in socio-economically deprived communities.
The workshops will also include a mixture of patient representatives, trust representatives, doctors and nurses from the hospitals, commissioners, independent experts and GPs.
The options consideration workshops will review all of the evidence we have collected and advise us:
- which criteria should be used for appraisal;
- how we should weight the criteria so they are considered fairly;
- and, which options should be short-listed after considering each potential solution against the criteria.
If you would like to be considered as a participant in one of these workshops then please contact Duncan Grimes from Traverse on duncan.grimes@traverse.ltd.