Health trusts launched in shake-up

3:08pm Thursday 3rd May 2001

A SHAKE-UP in how health is organised is about to take place in south Buckinghamshire.

But patients should not notice much difference if the restructuring goes ahead.

Patients will still visit the same family doctors in the same surgeries when they feel ill and get visits from the same health visitors.

It is just that some health professionals will be employed by different bodies.

Two primary care health trusts (PCTs) are to be set up to oversee and deliver primary and community health services, one in the Chiltern and south Buckinghamshire and the other in the High Wycombe area.

Primary care involves the people patients see first. Services at acute hospitals, such as Wycombe Hospital, are secondary care

If agreed the PCTs will replace two existing primary care groups and extend the health care they deliver directly and the health care workers they employ.

They would start in April next year, with a chief executive, chairman and management board.

People are being asked what they think via consultation documents, available in libraries, and a series of public meetings in June and July.

The first public meeting about the Chiltern and South Bucks PCT is on June 14 at noon in the Fitzwilliams Centre in Windsor End, Beaconsfield.

The first public meeting about the Wycombe PCT is at the Community Education Centre, Bartholomew School, Stokenchurch, at 7pm on June 12.

There will be a Community Health Council meeting at the Reggie Goves Centre, Paul's Row, High Wycombe, on June 13 at 7pm.

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