“the nearest hospital would then be 20 miles or 10 miles over

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

“the nearest hospital would then be 20 miles or 10 miles over the hills, not an easy journey”

Do the people in your village walk to the nearest hospital? Don’t understand the relevance of hills unless you plan to walk or cycle.

I live in a holiday town and there’s a small hospital within a 5 minute walk, but it can’t offer every service we need. There was a recent review looking into closing our local hospital, but since we get hundreds of thousands of holiday makers in summer, they are now looking at expanding the service. If something is needed, Labour tend not to close hospitals.

Few days ago we went to a hospital in Boston (about 20 miles from us) to see a dentist for our youngest son (needs a brace), when I needed an MRI for my back again Boston, when I had a procedure to check which disc caused pain (discograph) it was at Lincoln hospital (about 40 miles), the operation on my back was also at Lincoln hospital. Went to my GP last week (hip pain) and had the X-ray at the local hospital.

From the sound of it your village is very small, do you really think it’s cost effective to keep all hospitals open, just so it’s easier for people in small villages to get to a hospital?

Makes more sense to me to centralise important, life saving treatment (like cancer treatment) to keep costs down so more people can be treated. Doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me to have a expensive specialist cancer wards in a small village hospital when for the same money you can centralise the treatment in higher population areas and have those in small villages travel for treatment.

The NHS does not have unlimited funds, if you think local services are more important than treating more people faster, well I disagree. Obviously I’m not talking about putting hospitals so far apart that to get treatment you have to travel half way across the country to get an X-ray, but it’s not too much to ask that for some treatment people travel to a hospital in a centralised location as it saves the NHS money.

There are big benefits to living in the countryside, but there’s also costs like having to travel to a town/city for hospital treatment. You are being quite selfish to expect the NHS to fund a hospital near you when it sounds like it won’t be fully utilised!

BTW when I was waiting for my operation I couldn’t drive over about 20 miles at a time, found the medication I was on made me feel sleepy after about 20 miles driving! Had to arrange for the voluntary ambulance service to drive me to and from Lincoln hospital for safety reasons. The voluntary ambulance service is bloody brilliant and free, so if an elderly person can’t travel to a hospital the voluntary ambulance service will get them there and back for free.

The voluntary ambulance service isn’t a charity or anything like that. It’s part of the NHS and is called a voluntary service since the drivers are all volunteers and they don’t get paid for driving per se, they get their expenses paid (I think the money comes from the hospitals, but not sure on that one). I understand a small percentage of people do manage to drive as volunteers and make a living, but the majority of voluntary drivers are retired/semi retired looking to help out.

David