Share your views on plans to redesign services at west Hertfordshire's hospitals

The deadline for completing the online survey for the public to share their views about changes to hospital services has been extended until midnight on Sunday, March 28.

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust has been running a programme of public engagement Your Care, Your Views which has included around 20 meetings where local people have heard and asked questions about new ways of delivering patient care across the trust’s three hospitals.

An online survey is part of this engagement.

Recordings of public meetings, where senior clinicians have talked and answered questions about the proposals are available on the trust’s YouTube channel.

So far, around 648 people have joined the meetings or caught up with them online.

At the heart of the proposals – set out in Your Care, Your Views – is the aim to give each of the trust’s three hospitals a unique purpose along these lines:

> Watford General Hospital – emergency, maternity and inpatient care – including specialist services and complex surgery

> Hemel Hempstead Hospital – planned medical care and treatment for people with long term conditions

> St Albans City Hospital – planned surgery and cancer care.

All three sites will provide urgent care services and will benefit from new diagnostic facilities.

The trust’s chief medical officer, Dr Mike van der Watt, said: "I want to thank our busy clinicians for making the time to develop the proposals we have been sharing throughout our engagement programme.

"Despite the pressures of the pandemic, we have had great engagement and it's clear how committed our staff are to making our services the best they can be.

"We have reviewed the latest best practice from this country and abroad and have used that as well as national policy and our own ideas to create a vastly improved way of delivering patient care from our three hospitals.

"I am excited by our plans which are about so much more than buildings and beds. The quality and safety of our services and the clinical outcomes we want for our patients have been our guiding force."

On extending the survey deadline, deputy chief executive Helen Brown, said: "Our engagement so far has thrown up lots of questions about how the proposed new buildings can fit on the Watford site.

"People have also asked about disruption whilst building works are ongoing. We have released a short film and we hope that it helps people understand where new buildings could go and that the majority of the construction will take place away from our current patient areas."

The film is available to view online and detailed information about all the proposals outlined in the engagement is available on the trust’s website.

The Outline Planning Application for Watford General Hospital is scheduled for submission in Spring 2021 and a virtual public exhibition will run from Friday, March 26, to Friday, April 23.

The public are invited to comment on the draft proposals during this period via an online questionnaire.

There are also three public meetings taking place on Friday, March 26; Wednesday, March 31 and Tuesday, April 20. Further details, meeting links and feedback questionnaire details are available here.

The planning process for Watford General Hospital is a longer process so work on this site is more advanced. Further details about Hemel Hempstead and St Albans City hospitals will be available at a later stage. The order in which buildings and sites are rebuilt and refurbished is yet to be decided.