• Menu
  • Skip to left header navigation
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Before Header

  • Accessibility
  • Terms and settings
  • Site map
NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group

NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group

Clinicians commissioning healthcare for the people of Northumberland

  • Accessibility
  • Terms and settings
  • Site map
  • Home
  • About us
    • Our Governing Body
    • Governing Body members
    • Vision and values
    • Prescribing
    • Primary Care Commissioning Committee (PCCC)
    • How we work
    • Northern CCG joint committee meetings
    • Counter fraud
    • Safeguarding
    • Who we work with
    • Procurement
    • Our Integrated Care System and Partnerships
    • Primary Care Networks (PCN)
  • Get involved
    • Patient participation groups
    • Your NHS Online Community
    • Diversity and inclusion
    • You said, we did
    • How to get involved
    • Accessible communications
    • A new hospital for Berwick
    • Rothbury Community Hospital
    • Past engagement
    • Meet our engagement and communications team
  • Your health
    • COVID-19 Vaccine Information
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Why is your GP practice working differently?
    • Need urgent care?
    • Find a service
    • Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
    • Children’s mental health support
    • Personal health budgets
    • Health advice
    • What is social prescribing?
    • Stay well this winter
    • NHS 111
    • Patient choice
  • News
  • Events
    • Consultation and engagement events
    • Governing Body Meetings
    • Northern CCG joint committee meetings
    • Primary care commissioning committee meetings
  • Documents
    • Accessible information standard
    • Annual reports
    • Constitution and operational plans
    • Freedom of information disclosure log
    • Governing Body meeting papers
    • Plans and policies
    • Primary Care Commissioning Committee papers
    • Register of interests
    • Transparency reports
  • Opportunities
    • Vacancies
    • Training
  • Contact us
    • Compliments and complaints
    • Media enquiries
    • Freedom of information requests
    • Subject access requests

Mobile Menu

  • Accessibility information
  • Terms and settings
  • Site map
  • Home
  • About us
  • Get involved
  • Your health
  • News
  • Events
  • Documents
  • Contact us
You are here: Home / News / Rothbury Community Hospital: Significant progress made

Rothbury Community Hospital: Significant progress made

Wednesday 04 September 2019

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) announce significant progress on the future of much-loved local hospital in collaboration with local campaigners

Northumbria Healthcare and Northumberland CCG today announced that significant progress has been made towards resolving the future of the Rothbury Community Hospital following work undertaken alongside representatives from local campaign groups.

Following a public consultation in early 2017, a subsequent referral to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel (IRP) and recommendations by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, both organisations have been working with the community to get the most out of this much-loved facility.

Following extensive meetings and discussions with representatives from the local community, the trust and CCG are proactively looking to:

  • Increase outpatient clinics, from falls clinics through to orthopaedics and others, some of which will use new technological links that enable virtual consultations.
  • Provide additional clinical and day care services utilising the hospital site as a hub for health and care delivery.  Services include:
    • Dementia care
    • Learning disability forums
    • Health and well being clinics
    • Chemotherapy care
    • Enhanced emergency healthcare planning
    • Mental Health and IAPT services
    • Physiotherapy
    • Dentistry
  • Introduce a new metric to measure the number of miles travelled for services and, where possible, the NHS will look to reduce this.
  • Introduce a flexible bed model – with inpatient beds available within the hospital for short-term rehab and end of life care.  The number of beds will be dependent on clinical need.

Sir James Mackey, chief executive of Northumbria Healthcare, said: “We are committed to providing as much care as we can as locally as possible.  However, this has to be balanced with what is safe and sustainable.

“We have worked hard, with the support of local representatives, to create ‘the art of the possible’ and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their involvement and patience during this time.

“It will not be easy to deliver a flexible bed model, something that does not exist anywhere else within the NHS. However we are committed to working hard to make this work and will continue our engagement with the campaign group over the years to come to ensure we collectively make Rothbury Community Hospital the hub of health and well being for the local community.”

Janet Guy, lay chair of Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “We looked in detail at the Secretary of State’s recommendations and set up an engagement group with representatives from the local community to understand their concerns in more depth.

“We have listened to what the engagement group has had to say and are pleased that we now have a potential way ahead for the hospital which addresses many of the group’s concerns. We look forward to working together to ensure that the new model meets the needs of the community in ways which are effective and sustainable.”

The proposal will now be considered by Northumberland County Council’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 3 September 2019.

Katie Scott, spokesperson for the ‘Save Rothbury Community Hospital’ campaign group, said: “In recent months we have worked very closely with officials from the NHS. We are pleased to see that our concerns and ideas for the hospital have helped to inform and shape the proposals.  We look forward to the discussion at the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee when there should – at last – be a resolution, including inpatient beds, which will allow us all to focus on a vibrant future for Rothbury Community Hospital.”

Councillor Steven Bridgett said: “In the nearly three years since the 12 in-patient beds at Rothbury Community Hospital were closed I have been in awe – and am immensely proud – of the way the community has rallied round its local hospital. The ‘Save Rothbury Hospital’ team in particular have done a brilliant job.

“Since the Independent Reconfiguration Panel recommendations were announced the campaign, CCG, trust and myself – working alongside other community representatives – have met regularly to come up with proposals that will safeguard the future of the hospital.

“We are not there yet but I believe this offers a sensible, pragmatic compromise, that will see beds return to Rothbury hospital for step up, step down and end of life care, in addition to a number of other new services and I am very excited about what it means for the residents of the Coquet, Aln and Rede Valleys. But ultimately, it is the residents who live in these valleys that should decide and I welcome their opinions on these new proposals.”

© 2023 - NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group

Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}