Changes planned to Newark hospital services - patients to choose between Newark and Park House in Carlton
Podiatry services provided at Newark Hospital are switching provider.
In future, the services will pass to the full control of the Nottinghamshire Healthcare community surgical podiatry team from Sherwood Forest Hospitals, which manages Newark Hospital.
The trust said this was to give continuity as the team already provided many podiatry services.
A trust spokesman reassured people that nothing would change and the switch would give patients more choice over where to be treated.
“We don’t envisage that there will be any material changes to service provision,” they said.
“Patients will be able to choose whether they would prefer their treatment to be carried out at either Newark Hospital or Park House in Carlton, Nottingham.”
In addition, the trust has announced Newark Hospital’s mobile MRI scanner will be used four days a month, from the end of October.
The scanner originally came to Newark three days a month, but had its visits increased over the past 12 months to help meet the needs of Mansfield and Ashfield patients while an additional permanent scanner was installed at King’s Mill Hospital, Sutton-in-Ashfield.
The new scanner at King’s Mill is due to be up and running next month, so patients from Mansfield and Ashfield will use that.
The trust said the mobile MRI scanner at Newark will be in use for an extra day each month, four in total, which it says will meet the demand.
The chairman of the Say Yes to Newark Hospital campaign, Francis Towndrow, said: “The extra day for scanner use has got to be a step forward and is to be welcomed but, at the end of the day, with the Prime Minister promising extra money for hospitals, we need to see improvements in emergency care at Newark and a permanent scanner would assist in that.”
Secretary of the campaign group Paul Baggaley said: “In 2016 only 230 Newark patients out of 1,174 were able to have a MRI scan at Newark, the rest had to go to King’s Mill. With the mobile MRI at Newark on four days a month that figure is not likely to increase. Maybe its time there was a permanent scanner at Newark.”
Meanwhile, the main entrance to Newark Hospital will be closed on Saturday and Sunday for repair work on the glass canopy.
Signs will direct patients, staff and visitors via the Urgent Care Centre.
The works will not affect the running of the hospital.
