Hospital could set up town centre services to meet growing competition

Feb 7 2013 by Joe Thomas, Ormskirk Advertiser

HOSPITAL services may be moved into town centres to help Southport & Ormskirk Hospital Trust compete against private sector competition.

With companies such as Specsavers offering hearing aids trust bosses see the lack of a town centre presence as a key disadvantage in fighting the advances of rivals.

Trust chief executive Jonathan Parry said: The difficulty we have is we are not in the centre of town and we are starting to look at that.”

He said this could be vital in retaining services: “We are going to have to compete, we know what we have got to do and we know where the competition is going to come from. We are targeting services to make sure we can hang on to them.

He added: “We have got to be on our toes, we have got to compete. We know it’s coming but this is the new NHS world. You use it or lose it and we certainly need to provide excellent services otherwise people will go elsewhere.”