NHS England (Surrey and Sussex) and NHS Crawley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) want to hear views from people in Crawley about proposals to improve and simplify access to walk-in services for urgent care within the town.

NHS England (Surrey and Sussex) and NHS Crawley CCG have taken the opportunity to review existing services that are available to local people as the contract for services at Crawley Health Centre, Cross Keys House in Haslett Avenue, is due to come to an end in September 2015.   This includes a walk-in service between 8am and 8pm seven days a week and GP services for registered patients.

We are recommending that the walk-in service at Crawley Health Centre should in future be delivered as part of the services already available at Crawley Hospital in order to consolidate and improve patient access to local urgent care services.

Under the plans, patients would be able to access more services from Crawley Hospital, which already has an Urgent Treatment Centre and would provide a greater range of treatments for various conditions and injuries 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This will bring the following benefits to patients:

• less confusion about where to access services – Crawley Hospital is well-known and easy to find, with good access by public transport;
• better use of limited NHS resources, avoiding the duplication of two walk-in services within half a mile of one another, meaning we can do more for Crawley patients with the same funding.
• access to an enhanced Urgent Treatment Centre with a greater range of treatments for minor illnesses and injuries available in one place, which is open 24 hours 7 days a week

Patients currently registered at Crawley Health Centre will be supported to re-register at another local GP practice of their choice.  The immediate area is well served for GP practices, with 12 other surgeries within around two miles of Crawley Health Centre, the majority of which are ready to welcome new patients and which offer a similar range of services.

NHS England (Surrey and Sussex) Interim Director, Sarah Creamer said: “The contract for Crawley Health Centre will end next year.  We want to hear what local people think of our proposals, which we believe will strengthen the local services available to patients.”

NHS Crawley CCG Chairman, Alan Kennedy, said: “Patient feedback and experiences are key to ensuring we plan NHS services that work for our local community. We want to ensure that we make the best use of every health pound that we spend in Crawley, and provide high quality walk-in and urgent services.   As you will know through the CCG’s 5 Communities Plan, we want to do much more for local people within Crawley Hospital and we are currently working to expand services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Local people will be able to give their views on the proposals as part of an engagement process launched today, which will run up until 1 February 2015.