Eddie Duller, a director and former chairman of Healthwatch Oxfordshire, gives his personal view of the decisions taken so far to change the way health services are run in the county.

SO much for the trumpeted consultation by the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) over the first phase in changing the healthcare system in the county.

They claimed to have taken into account the views of 14,000 people, which has so far cost the taxpayer almost £150,000, and they have ignored them.

I believe their action in doing so shows that they are simply following the orders of the NHS to a pre-arranged national overhaul of the system.

They have shouldered aside the protests and proposals of people in the north of the county by saying they intend to close down permanently the consultant led maternity unit at the Horton Genera Hospital and downgrade it to a midwife-led unit.

They have also snubbed the county-wide representatives who sit on the Oxfordshire County Council’s scrutiny committee, which was against this, and have not answered questions from Healthwatch Oxfordshire asking for more detail on what is to happen at Banbury.

They have ignored also the prediction of a population growth of 183,900 for Oxfordshire by 2031. They have turned a blind eye to the fact that Oxford has one of the fastest growing economies in the country, which will be spearheaded by hi-tech industries, meaning there will be an influx of younger families and a likely dramatic increase in the birth rate.

It is already happening in Banbury and Bicester, as well as in Didcot and Witney.

To centralise the maternity services in Oxford and closing down more than 100 hospital beds at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital are considerable causes for concern.

Operating a hospital at a very high bed occupancy rate is risky and it is doubly risky when those beds are concentrated in one place.

But the argument is not over yet.

The influential county council health overview and scrutiny committee has referred the maternity downgrade to the Health Secretary, where the public’s point of view may be taken more seriously.

In my view, and that of Healthwatch Oxfordshire and almost universally by other organisations, it was a mistake to hold the so-called consultation in two parts.

Changes to health and social services in the county should be considered as a whole and not implemented until alternative arrangements are in place.

Bearing in mind the failure by the commissioning group and the JR to solve the problem of delayed transfer of people’s care from hospitals to home, a problem first highlighted by Healthwatch Oxfordshire two years ago, the closure of beds is worrying to say the least.

The second part of the alleged consultation is due to begin later in the autumn.

After cold-shouldering the public in the first phase it will be interesting to see how people in Oxford and the surrounding market towns respond.

Will their views be taken into account?

People are already nervous about the fate of the community hospitals in the market towns and there are many questions to be answered over the potential success of grouping together of GPs to combat a shortage in this vital area, as well as the infrastructure associated with looking after people at home.

It doesn’t help public confidence to see the commissioning group power through their ideas in Banbury.

Their promise of treating another 90,000 people a year has not been fleshed out by any precise details, which causes me to think that the changes to the rest of the county may well be radical and tied in to a similar idea.

Rumour has it that the Horton will be configured on similar lines to a new 'health campus' in Henley, where people are treated as day patients and looked after at home.

But, in my view, rumours do more harm than good and the commissioning group should come clean by giving more detail and involve people much earlier in a proper consultation.

I can understand people asking whether it is worth the bother to respond to any form of consultation after the treatment meted out to people in the north of the county in the first phase.

However, whether the commissioning group is working to a predetermined blueprint or not, people should take every opportunity and tell them what they expect – which is not the sort of medicine dished out so far at Banbury.

They want and should get a proper say in how they are looked after.