Hospital to lose full A&E service

Full accident and emergency care would be removed from Canterbury

A long-awaited review of health services in Kent has recommended removing full accident and emergency services from Canterbury.

It is one of 14 suggestions in a report published on Monday setting out the re-organisation of health provision in east Kent.

The government is to give East Kent Health Authority £17m to fund the changes.

The report was put together by an independent panel and approved by the secretary of state for health John Reid.

It says the accident and emergency unit in the Kent and Canterbury Hospital should become a local emergency centre.

We would all like everything to be on our doorsteps all the time but that's simply not affordable no matter what the level of funding in the health service Panel chairman Dr Peter Barrett

The panel said this would "meet the emergency care needs of the vast majority of local people".

It recommended the hospitals in Canterbury, Ashford (William Harvey Hospital) and Margate (Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital) should support each other and work more closely together.

Where feasible services should only be provided at one or two of the three hospitals - meaning accident and emergency units would only be provided in Ashford and Margate.

Such a plan was first outlined in the mid-1990s and has been criticised by some campaigners who say they worry about having to travel for a full accident and emergency service.

But the panel chairman, Dr Peter Barrett, a GP, said: "We would all like everything to be on our doorsteps all the time but that's simply not affordable no matter what the level of funding in the health service.

"So I think we do have to be grown up about it, we do have to look at health care for the whole of east Kent and not just our patch."

The report says 80% of people who have previously been treated at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital still would be.