ALL hospital births in the county are expected to take place at Worcester in future following a meeting next week which formally decides the fate of acute services.

The future of acute hospital services will be ratified at a public meeting at Bromsgrove District Council Offices, Parkside, Bromsgrove on Wednesday (July 12) at 9am.

The governing bodies of the three clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which hold the purse strings of NHS care are set to approve the proposed clinical model.

Controversially it would include moving all hospital births from the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch to the Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.

Inpatient children’s services would also be moved from Redditch to Worcester. Outpatient and urgent services for children with minor and moderate illnesses will remain at Redditch.

Both accident and emergency departments would remain open 24-hours a day. Due to the transfer of inpatient children’s beds, the A&E at the Alexandra Hospital would be for adults (over 16 years old) only.

All emergency surgery would take place at Worcester.

Most planned orthopaedic surgery, planned breast surgery and some planned gynaecology surgery would move from from Worcester to Redditch.

More ambulatory care (medical care provided on an outpatient basis including diagnosis, observation, consultation, treatment, intervention and rehabilitation) would also move from Worcester to Redditch.

More day case and short stay surgery would move to Kidderminster Hospital.

NHS leaders maintain that 95 per cent of people would continue to receive their care in the same hospital as before and 80 per cent of children who receive their treatment at Redditch would continue to do so.

Worcester and Redditch would have new Urgent Care Centres which would treat adults and children with minor and moderate illnesses and injuries.

Diagnostic tests and outpatient appointments would take place in all three hospitals, as now.

Public consultation on the clinical model ran from January 6 to March 30 2017.

The CCGs say they gave listened to the views of 5,785 people at drop in events, meetings and via letters, emails and questionnaires.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has been told they must review the scheduling of outpatient appointments and operations to take account of patient travel needs and individual circumstances.

The CCGs and the hospital trust are to work with community transport providers to make sure there is a service between Redditch and Worcester for a minimum of 12 months.