Overnight GP service to launch at Stafford Hospital
An overnight emergency GP service is being launched at Stafford Hospital next year as part of the takeover by bosses in north Staffordshire.
It would be available for patients who do not require 999 but who need to be seen by a doctor.
Discussions are still ongoing among health chiefs but it is expected to be in place by April next year.
It comes as it was revealed Accident and Emergency will double in size to reduce overcrowding as part of a £150 million cash injection – but it will remain open for only 14 hours a day and is not expecting to treat any extra patients.
Stafford will also get a new MRI scanner and a possible new eye surgery unit and frail elderly assessment service.
Outpatient facilities will be expanded, wards will be refurbished and a new operating theatre opened.
Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust will be dissolved on November 1 and replaced by a new trust named the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.
Stafford will be known as the County Hospital, meaning the names Stafford and Staffordshire will disappear.
Bosses previously said the names had been tainted following the Stafford Hospital scandal and led to clinical staff not wanting to work in the region.
Stafford MP Jeremy Lefroy said: "As a community, we have fought hard for this investment and we have been listened to. In my meetings with Government, I pointed out time and again that Stafford Hospital was even more important to the region with an increasing and ageing population.
"The tremendous work of Support Stafford Hospital and the whole community made it clear to all that we needed to keep an acute District General Hospital in Stafford. As a result, the amount being put in is about double what was originally proposed.
"But that does not mean that I will stop arguing for more local services. Our campaign to return the A&E to 24/7 operation with paediatric services alongside a consultant-led maternity unit continues.
"In the meantime, the news that an overnight doctor-led service at Stafford Hospital is being considered is welcome. It would mean that adults or children who fall ill at night but do not need a 999 service can seek treatment, referral or reassurance by seeing the overnight doctor service at their local hospital."
In 2013, the Francis Report into the Mid-Staffs NHS Trust concluded there had been basic failings in standards of care at Stafford, with hundreds more patients dying than would have been expected between 2005 and 2008.
