DRASTIC changes were urgently needed to make sure that Minehead residents got the health care they needed, Somerset County Council’s health scrutiny committee was told at its meeting last week.

Cllr Mandy Chilcott, who represents Minehead, said: "I have people who are very concerned about the health provision locally. It’s letting us down, whether it’s ambulances, GPs or the MIU."

Her concerns came when the committee was discussing the Minor Injuries Unit (MIU) at Minehead’s community hospital which has been closed at night since last July following doubts about ’the safety of the service’.

The closure was originally planned to last four months but was extended for a further six months in November 2021 to allow health bosses to come up with wide-reaching plans to improve acute health services in the West Somerset area. A final decision will be taken in the spring.

Cllr Chilcott added: "Many people have no transport, and there’s no public transport after 6pm, so there’s no way they can get to Taunton A&E. Closing the MIU at night does not address this. We need to work with health locally to find an innovative solution. If you can work something out here you can roll it out elsewhere."

Maria Heard, who leads the Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Fit For My Future programme, said there had been cases of Minehead patients not receiving the treatment they needed because they attended the MIU during night-time hours rather than going to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

She said: "There have been three examples over the last three years where patient outcomes have been compromised because the patients attended the overnight MIU rather than going to A&E. We have heard concerns about general access to emergency care in Minehead and the wider West Somerset area.

"We are working to agree on a model of care for the West Somerset area which best responds to the urgent and emergency care needs of the area."

Following the initial four-month overnight closure of the MIU, a review of the service was carried out, involving MIU staff, health partners and the general public.

The review found there were ’no safety risks’ with closing the MIU overnight, adding that any impact on the surrounding healthcare services, such as GP surgeries and pharmacies, would not have been better managed by keeping it open.

The review also found the MIU was acting as a ’safety net’ for local patients, in light of both the lengthy journey to Musgrove and the long waits for ambulances.

Ms Heard said: "As MIUs are not designed to deliver the level of urgent and emergency care described, the use of this service as a ’safety net’ would attribute to further safety concerns where the MIU was to remain open at night."

The board of the Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Musgrove and the county’s community hospitals, voted in November 2021 to extend the overnight closure by a further six months, giving the CCG and other health partners until May 1, 2022, to come up with a long-term plan for urgent and emergency healthcare in the area.

Julie Jones, the trust’s service director for integrated and urgent care, said work was being done to provide transport for urgent care.

She said: "Travel is an issue, particularly for the elderly, and I think we need to think about whether we can provide some transport for getting them into Taunton and getting them back when they need to go home.

"There is quite a lot going on around services, and we’re not communicating with the public very well about what is there, where they are and how people can access them.

"We are really starting to think about how we support people who fall in the area because we know that ambulance response times are not good in the area."

Final recommendations for the future shape of health services in and around Minehead will be published in the spring.

Minehead MIU remains open seven days a week between 8am and 9pm, with the trust stating in August 2021 that no further closures of any of Somerset’s MIUs were being planned.

Daniel Mumby

Local democracy reporter