Some clinical specialties must happen in a hospital. The equipment required, access to support services and the patient numbers required to maintain expertise dictate that. Patients understand that and are willing to travel to access such services. However, there are other areas of healthcare that don't have those same constraints and simply should not be located in acute hospitals but devolved into the community. Minor surgery, dermatology, outpatients, etc. This is well understood by government. Why then do we continue to see capital investment still prioritised to the flagship district general hospital? The committee might wish to look at past and future capital investment plans to see if their rural/ urban acute/ primary care distribution is in line with the rhetoric. (PS, it isn't - what can we do about that?)
should be improved communication between secondary care and primary care.
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