A CONSULTANT surgeon has questioned health chiefs on proposals to move some emergency care out of Winchester, suggesting that city hospital beds could be empty.

Frances Goulder asked bosses at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT), which runs Winchester hospital, what services will be available at the Romsey Road site once a new hospital is built.

Plans are currently being developed for a new hospital in or near Basingstoke to serve the people of north and mid Hampshire.

Miss Goulder said: “I know that the plan is for outpatients to remain in Winchester, I know that the plan is for people to be able to come in and have scans and endoscopies and sort of day case minor things.

“It seems to me that what makes a hospital is having ill people in beds, and I would be very interested to know whether there will be any inpatient beds, how many inpatient beds will be in Winchester?”

She questioned whether a child would be able to have their appendix out or an elderly woman with a urinary tract infection could be admitted for a course of antibiotics.

“These are not rare things that need to be sent to a tertiary referral hospital they are very common, very frequent.

“At the moment we have got 300 beds full of patients having stuff done, is the plan for all of that to go to Basingstoke,” she added.

Dr Lara Alloway, chief medical officer for the trust, responded to Miss Goulder during an Ask the NHS meeting organised by Winchester’s MP Steve Brine.

Dr Alloway said that options are still being worked on but that lessons have been learnt from Covid which will impact new hospital plans.

She continued: “What we have all learnt is the need to be able to separate our electable planned surgery, so our desire for Winchester is all the things you mentioned – outpatient, scans - we absolutely want to be able to see people who have minor injuries, minor illnesses and to have a planned surgical centre, so not day case but actually all surgery even if requires an inpatient stay, not if it is likely to require the support of intensive care because that we see a benefit in centralising,

“All of your examples are emergency admissions, now if an operation clearly is an emergency and requires admission, if that happens then we are wanting to centralise that into our acute hospital and there are many benefits.”

Miss Goulder claimed that around 95 per cent of patients currently at Winchester hospital were emergency admissions, but this was disputed by Dr Alloway.

“It would be fair to say that the vast majority of admissions are emergency admissions wouldn’t it, so pretty much all of the medical admissions are emergency admissions so if you don’t take emergency admissions you don’t really have a hospital an inpatient hospital,” Miss Goulder said.

She also raised fears that much her work, elective and emergency operations, would be moved up to Basingstoke.