Doctor insists new structure will bring ‘genuine benefits’ for Littlehampton area

IT is now less than a year until the new-style NHS brought about by the government’s controversial reforms, transferring power to GPs, comes into force.

On April 1, 2013, the Coastal West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) will take over responsibility for the NHS budget of more than £600m for 500,000 people across a wide area of the county.

But the group has been meeting as a “shadow” body for the past 20 months and is now effectively making the major decisions as a sub-committee of NHS Sussex, which will cease to exist at the end of March next year.

As far as Littlehampton is concerned, the first evidence of the CCG’s activity was the recommendation, subsequently accepted by NHS Sussex, not to proceed with a business case for Littlehampton Hospital.

However, Dr Tim Kimber insists that in the long term, there will be genuine benefits for the whole area in the new structure of the health service.

“It’s got to be a better way of running the NHS,” he said.

“We have a track record these past 20 months of doing that, and proving that we can make changes.”