HEALTH chiefs have pledged that residents views will be taken seriously before decisions are made on major changes to Dorset’s health system.

In a frank interview with the Daily Echo, Tim Goodson chief officer of NHS Dorset CCG said alternative proposals made by members of the public could determine the final decision.

The 12 week public consultation is being run by an independent company and once closed, feedback will be analysed and the results fed back to help health bosses make the decision next year.

He said: “The decision-making process will be robust, rigorous and fair.

“We are really keen for as many people as possible to respond.

“The whole programme has evolved over the last two years so the one thing it hasn’t been is fixed from the start.

“We genuinely want to hear people’s views and other organisations too. We are not the monopoly of good ideas. The more people we can pull into this, the better. You could well see it evolving.”

The chief officer said a ‘do nothing’ scenario is simply not an option amid a funding and workforce crisis.

Tim said: “The whole health system has come together and it's now our duty to hold the mirror up on Dorset.

“Whilst everyone loves their services, their hospitals and the people who work there, when you stand back and take a hard look at it, it’s hard to say what we have is the correct configuration. Everything we look at points to the fact it is not.

“Clearly people are nervous about it but we are saying to the public, there is a better way of doing this.”

Tim revealed all four providers suffered a combined £23m deficit by the end of last year adding both Poole and Dorset County Hospital have even resorted to taking out loans in order to survive.

A shortage of medical staff has left the CCG relying on expensive agency staff which is costing the county ‘millions of pounds’ despite their desperate efforts to recruit from other countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and as far as the Philippines.

These staff members and resources are spread too thinly across the county, according to Dorset CCG.

Tim said the region has more community hospitals than anywhere else in the country but in some, just 50 per cent of the facilities are used.

Despite this, he said the county has a tendency to ‘overuse’ its acute hospitals when patients could be treated closer to home, leading to longer waiting times and cancelled operations.

Furthermore, there are also three acute hospitals where specialist services often act independently leading to duplication across the sites rather than teams working closer together so consultants could be on site for more of the day, he added.

Tim said the proposed major shake-up would remodel care to better use the workforce and resources in a bid to improve patient outcomes – and save more lives.

He said: “What we are trying to say, overall, is you will get better outcomes if you have got the right staff in the right place for the right amount of time.

“If you look at Dorset, our assessment of this is we are just spreading things too thinly and we don’t get the best outcome we could get. We’ve got a model where we are spending a lot of our financial resources and then effectively splitting our workforce over too many sites.

“Our system is crumbling under a financial pressure and a workforce pressure. With those two combined, you end up with a poorer outcome and quality of service that you could have.”

Tim said there are no plans for any staff redundancies however employees may have to change the location and the team in which they work.

He added staff are at the heart of the NHS services in Dorset and would be supported through the changes.