Test and learn in Burnham-on-Sea and Crewkerne

10 Year Health Plan

The 10 Year Health Plan was published in July and sets out how it will reinvent the NHS through three radical shifts. One of those shifts is a shift of services from hospital to community.

The 10 Year Health Plan sets out how the shift from hospital to community will be realised through the Neighbourhood Health Service that will bring care into local communities, convene professionals into patient-centred teams and end fragmentation. At its core, the Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle that care should happen:

• as locally as it can
• digitally by default
• in a patient’s home if possible
• in a neighbourhood health centre (NHC) when needed
• in a hospital if necessary.

Our trust and NHS Somerset are working together on a programme designed to deliver that shift. We are running two test and learn processes and NHS Somerset is inviting local people to shape how the NHS in Somerset shifts care to neighbourhoods to achieve better health outcomes and less pressure on acute hospitals.

The outcomes from the public engagement and the outcomes of the test and learn processes will help shape NHS Somerset’s new community services strategy which will enshrine the high-level principles of how the local NHS will deliver community services across Somerset.

Test and learn in Burnham-on-Sea and Crewkerne

Our community hospitals are vital assets for the future delivery of healthcare services for local communities. We think there are exciting opportunities to make greater use of both Burnham-on-Sea War Memorial Hospital and Crewkerne Community Hospital with an expanded range of diagnostic services and treatments which could benefit many more local people, meaning that fewer local residents need to travel to one of our acute hospitals.

We have begun work with our Leagues of Friends, and with colleagues, discussing potentially reducing bedded capacity at those hospitals in order to create more physical space for additional services such as additional outpatients, chemotherapy, cardiology, urology, and community midwifery. We will have the same conversation with local people and representatives.

If any changes are made, they will be on a temporary test and learn basis. No decisions have been made to permanently close community hospital beds.