PATIENTS across Worcestershire must be given their say on a long-running project revamping hospital services in the county as soon as possible, a senior health boss has said.

Speaking at a meeting of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’s board on Wednesday, June 24, non-executive director Stephen Howarth said he believed patients were confused by the long delays to the project, which has been in progress since 2012 and was originally slated to be fully complete by the end of last year.

Although a public consultation into the project, which involves reorganising services at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Kidderminster Hospital and Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital, was expected to be launched held last September, it was put on hold while the West Midlands Clinical Senate put together a report into the project, which was finally released earlier this month.

Addressing concerns the delays to the project could cause a plethora of problems for the organisation such as difficulties with recruitment, meaning the trust would be forced to shell out for expensive temporary staff.

“This has been hanging around for two or three years,” he said. “People out there want to know what’s going on.

“We do need to get out there and get citizen’s views because they are quite confused.”

The trust’s interim chief medical officer Andy Phillips said continued delays to the project could have dire consequences for patients in the county as a whole.

“It’s a risk we feel we must address,” he said. “We very much need to look at the future.”

In its report the senate backed plans to set up a Major Emergency Centre at the Royal where the most serious accidents and injuries will be treated as well as an Emergency Centre at the Alex. But it also asked for the programme board to carry out more work on the emergency care elements of the proposal as well as to draw up detailed plans on how more space will be made at the Royal to deal with the expected increased amount of paediatric cases.

The board has also been told to ensure patients and staff better understand where sick children from the Redditch and Bromsgrove area should be taken.

Other elements of the project including centralising maternity, gynaecology and emergency surgery services at the Royal have been supported while the senate has asked the programme board to ensure the plan was fully supported by acute trust clinicians before the consultation is launched.

Campaigners have repeatedly claimed patients in the north of the county will suffer as a result of the project.