PEOPLE in Tenbury are being urged to take part in a consultation that could affect the future of the town’s hospital.

Cash-strapped health chiefs have put out a plan for consultation that would see a slashing in the number of community beds in Worcestershire.

The transition plan from the Worcestershire NHS Trust envisaged a reduction in the number of community beds in the county from 324 at present to 182.

It is not clear how, or if, the cut of almost 50 per cent would affect Tenbury Hospital.

But Harriett Baldwin, the MP for West Worcestershire that includes Tenbury, is urging people to take part in a consultation that has been launched.

She wants local people to speak up over a plan released by the Worcestershire Health and Care Trust which will seek to make our local health service sustainable in the face of rising demand and an ageing population.

The Sustainability and Transformation Plan has been commissioned by NHS England to try and find ways in which the resources across Herefordshire and Worcestershire’s health service can best be used. The draft plan suggests that it will make less use of the county’s community beds.

Harriett Baldwin represents three community hospitals in her constituency in Tenbury, Malvern and Pershore and she has written to the trust asking for data on bed occupancy rates in them.

The MP has also discussed the draft plan with the trust’s Sarah Dugan who has urged local people to make sure they take part in the consultation process.

“Local and national health budgets are rising, but so is demand,” said Harriett Baldwin.

“Our community hospitals deliver important local services such as operating minor injuries units, offering x-ray and scan facilities and allowing procedures to be carried out closer to people’s homes.

“Tenbury’s hospital has had some new wards added. I favour more use of these community assets closer to home at a time when pressure on the acute hospital is showing no sign of abating.

“I have always said that we should make more, not less, of these resources, including encouraging acute trust consultants to visit their community hospitals and carry out treatment there.

“It is now vital that local people have their say and make sure they feed into the consultation exercise. We need to show just how highly-valued community hospitals like Tenbury, Malvern, and Pershore really are to local people.”

Last year, the service offered by the Minor Injuries Unit at Tenbury Hospital was cut back.

In March 2015, the unit which was formerly open 25 hours a day had its opening hours halved and is now only available between 9am and 9pm which leaves Kidderminster as the nearest place for people to go with problems that are not an emergency but require hospital treatment.

Health chiefs said that there was insufficient demand to justify opening 24 hours a day which sometimes required using high-cost agency nursing staff.

In 2012 Tenbury Hospital lost its operating theatre that had been used for minor surgical procedures.