DOCTORS have warned that Bicester has a big fight on its hands to ensure it gets a new hospital.

Senior GPs at Bicester Health Clinic say war has broken out across Oxfordshire to save threatened community hospitals.

And they fear if people in Bicester show little support for a new £3m community hospital, health bosses may spend the money elsewhere.

Dr Michael Curry and Dr Richard Stephenson have appealed to the public to turn up to a crunch public meeting in three weeks time.

They believe that is the only sure way to convince Oxfordshire Community Health NHS Trust of the need for the hospital.

Dr Curry said: "This is warfare. We have to fight our corner and show that Bicester needs a new hospital."

The trust's draft consultation document, now being debated across the county, lists two options, both of which include a new 30-bed community hospital at Bicester with running costs of £380,000 a year.

The present 12-bed hospital in Oxford Road would be sold and a new one built on land next door.

The options also propose closing other community hospitals and reducing the number of beds at five others.

Oxfordshire presently has 11 community hospitals providing 304 beds but the majority are clustered in the south and west of the county.The hospitals at Abingdon, Didcot, Wallingford, Wantage, Watlington, Witney and Burford have a total of 230 beds. But north Oxfordshire only has 32 beds - 12 at Bicester and 20 at Chipping Norton. Banbury and Kidlington do not have a community hospital.

Elsewhere Thame in the east has 18 beds and OXCOMM in Oxford has 24.

Dr Curry said: "The distribution is astonishing but we cannot just expect common sense to prevail and the hospital to arrive.""In the south there are a lot of middle class brigadier-types with a lot of time on their hands to whip up support. "

Community hospital beds mainly provide care to the elderly and the terminally ill. They also provide respite care to relieve pressure on families providing care at home.

Bicester Community Hospital has had recent difficulties with 'blocked beds' where elderly patients are stuck in limbo because there is either not the funding or the room to place them in a nursing home.

Some patients have been blocking beds for several months and at its worst point half the beds at Bicester were blocked.

According to Oxfordshire Social Services there are currently about 70 blocked beds across the county.

Rodney Kane, placement manager for north Oxfordshire, said: "Bicester is the worst it has been for some time."

He added: "I think there is a need to equalise the distribution of beds across the county."

The public meeting is at Bicester and Ploughley Sports Centre off Queens Avenue, Bicester, on May 12 from 7.30pm to 9.30pm.

Letters of support should be sent to Michael Taylor, Health Futures Two, Oxfordshire Health Authority, Richards Building, Old Road, Heddington, Oxford OX3 7LJ, before public consultation ends on July 4.

For more information call 01865 226970.

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