2:29pm Friday 4th July 2008
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Lord Ara Darzi, the health minister, made a low-key visit to Leatherhead Community Hospital on Monday, to avoid protests about health cuts.
They talked to patients and staff as they celebrated the 60th anniversary of the NHS and highlighted the changes to develop healthcare in the future.
But the visit was not given prior publicity for fear of attracting campaigners outraged that people in Leatherhead could be about to lose easy access to maternity and paediatric care if Epsom General Hospital is downgraded.
As he walked round the community hospital in Poplar Road, Mr Brown said that healthcare was "a moral right secured for all".
He said: "We need a more personalised NHS response to each of us as individuals, focused on prevention, better equipped to keep us healthy and capable of giving us real control and real choice over our care and our lives."
His visit was to launch Lord Darzi's review of the NHS which outlines nationwide plans for the future. These include giving patients more information and choice, improving standards, making effective drugs available to all patients and giving patients the legal right to choose any healthcare provider.
The review includes plans to support family doctors, community nurses, hospitals and local authorities to work together and to enable frontline staff to initiate and lead change that improves quality of care for patients.
The plans include improved care and support for people with chronic illnesses and an emphasis on preventative care.
Leatherhead was chosen because it is run by Central Surrey Health, a social enterprise company, the first of its kind in the UK which employs nurses and therapists formerly employed by the health authority.
Ironically, it will be one of the areas where pregnant women and families will find their choice of healthcare limited if a scheme goes ahead which could remove full maternity and inpatient paediatric care from Epsom.
It comes in a week when consultants in women and children's services at Epsom General Hospital prepared a detailed document which claims that maintaining services at Epsom and St Helier hospitals is possible.
Geoff Martin, head of campaigns for Health Emergency, said: "Someone ought to have briefed Gordon Brown that people in Leatherhead are not particularly enamoured of Government health policy because they are about to lose their frontline services."
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