Delight as urgent care service is set to be returned to hospital

NHS Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Clinical commissioning Group decided urgent care services will be delivered from the hospital rather than the One Life facility in Park Road.

A CCG spokeswoman said: “NHS Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Clinical commissioning Group is currently carrying out a procurement for the provision of Integrated Urgent Care services in Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees.

“This service will be delivered from University Hospital of Hartlepool and North Tees hospital Stockton site in the future.

“We have engaged both local authorities whilst undertaking our review of urgent care services and the proposals to integrate these.

“We have also been working alongside Hartlepool Borough Council to develop the Hartlepool Local Health and Social Care plan, this clearly demonstrates our on-going commitment to collaborative working.”

It will also mean that for the first time in the hospital’s history, there will be a GP led Integrated Urgent Care service delivered 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

Hartlepool Borough Council has been campaigning for services to return to Holdforth Road and following a High Court battle it was announced that fertility services would be staying despite North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust saying it did not want to continue the service.

Coun Christopher Akers-Belcher, the leader of the council and chair of the town’s Health & Wellbeing Board, said: “As a council we have been working with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) for some time advocating that these urgent care services needed to be commissioned as a single service and that they should be delivered from the Holdforth Road hospital site.

“We will continue to do everything we can to maintain existing services and fight to see others return as this is the overwhelming wish of the people of our town.”

Coun Ray Martin-Wells, the chair of the council’s Audit & Governance Committee, said: “I am delighted that these key services will be returning to the University Hospital of Hartlepool and I would like to praise the CCG on its decision.

“This decision demonstrates that services can be returned to our hospital and hopefully this will be a major step in seeing the return of further services in the future.”