There are fresh fears for the future of Cornwall’s community hospitals. Campaigners say beds are closed at St Ives, Falmouth and Fowey.
Pirate FM told you Minor Injuries is shut at St Barnabas in Saltash because of a staff shortage, although bosses insist the three month closure is temporary.
However, Health Initiative Cornwall is worried sites could be a target because of a Sustainability and Transformation Plan to save cash.
Spokesman Graham Webster said: “Each community has a lot of value and respect for its own community hospital. It’s part of the very fabric of each community – part of the very fabric of society, really.
“Local communities feel that their community hospital is very much part of the solution to the problems that we now have and not part of the problem”.
The problem being the strain on Cornwall’s biggest hospital. Pirate FM told you Treliske had been on the highest alert for more than a week earlier this month, because of a surge in patients turning up at A&E and so-called bed-blocking.
On Friday, it emerged that the Royal Cornwall had reported a never event, where a patient had surgery on the wrong part of the body.
North Cornwall’s MP Scott Mann has urged health bosses in Cornwall to protect community hospitals ahead of transformation plans being published later this year.
Full story in Pirate FM, 14 February 2017