Buckland Hospital will shortly open as one of the new class of Urgent Treatment Centres being rolled out across the country.
The new centre in Dover will be a major upgrade to the existing Minor Injuries Unit. It will have GPs on hand, instead of the current nurse-led facility, and be open for four extra hours a day, between 8am and 10pm. Local health bosses said it is due to open later this year.
I met with East Kent Hospitals chief executive Susan Acott and chairman Stephen Smith to discuss the plans. At the meeting I also pressed for urgent improvements to maternity and other services across the Trust.
But this is good news for Buckland. I’ve been pushing for more services– it is a state-of-the-art facility which needs to be fully used – and for better healthcare to be provided by the Trust for our community. I hope that we will see even more services provided at Dover.
The new centre will also be a base for training some of the new generation of medics when the Kent Medical School opens its doors later this year. So we will have a training hospital in our community as well. That means we can start to attract and train the brightest and best medical talent for our local hospitals and GP surgeries.