Providing High Quality, Local Services for Our Community

NHS Dorset and GP commissioners are committed to increasing the amount of high quality, local care provided in, or close to people’s homes. We have invested an additional £3.7 million into services in the community to help achieve this, and we will be increasing this by a further £1.1 million in 2012/2013 to further improve local services.  We are also working with Dorset County Council to implement a strategy that includes making community hospitals ‘hubs’ for local services.

We must make sure that we, the local NHS, are delivering patient focussed services that reflect best clinical practice, are high quality and are provided in the most effective location to achieve this. Where our population needs to use services on a frequent or continual basis, we will aim to provide these in the community where it is safe to do so.

Where it makes clinical sense to provide a service from a main hospital due to, for example, improved safety or more effective use of highly skilled clinicians (enabling more patients to be treated), this will be our preferred option and we hope it is one our local community would support. The proposals are being made by NHS Dorset, Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust to make better use of the expertise and the hospital facilities we have in West Dorset.