Your hospital services are changing and our doctors and nurses want to tell you why and how!

Our ‘Your Care, Your Views’ public engagement programme sets out proposals for the services we provide from our hospitals at Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead.

The ideas you can read about have come from clinical staff who are ambitious for their services and are driven by wanting the best results for our patients. To say I’m impressed with their level of engagement whilst managing a pandemic is an understatement.

The starting point of our proposals is for each of the hospitals to have a more clearly defined role. Emergency, inpatient and complex care will remain at Watford; Hemel Hempstead Hospital will be the centre for planned medical care and long term conditions and St Albans City Hospital will be the centre for planned surgery and cancer care. Urgent care services and some outpatient services will be provided at all three sites.

Diagnostic facilities will be significantly upgraded at all three hospitals and the latest digital technology will be incorporated.

We remain committed to transforming the site at Watford and in making significant improvements to our other hospitals.

A public meeting was held last week to describe our proposals broadly and the recording of that is now on our website.

I am pleased to share news of our programme of service-specific meetings which are open to all and start today (Monday). There are opportunities for you to ask questions.

It would be great to have your company. All the details are here: www.westhertshospitals.nhs.uk/about/redevelopment/

Wishing you the best of health,

Dr Mike van der Watt

Chief Medical Officer

West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust