IMAGINE you’ve had to go into the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for a major procedure.

Maybe you’ve fallen and broken a bone, maybe you’ve been in a car accident, or maybe you’ve had a near-death experience with the coronavirus and spent several months fighting it.

You’ve recovered to the point where you no longer need the help of the expert team at the JR – but you’re still very weak: you’ve been in bed for weeks or months so you can’t walk properly and you’re still recovering from surgery.

This is the point where, normally, you would be sent to one of our county’s community hospitals to finish your recuperation.

In recent years, this is what we have used our community hospitals for: to enable people to recover.

Now, however, authorities in our county are trying something new: instead of sending people to a community hospital to recover they want to send people... straight home.

You don’t go home completely alone, exactly: the idea of the Home First initiative (see the feature on page 12 in today's Oxford Mail) is to work our exactly what support people would need in order to be able to recover at home: visits from carers, community nurses, physiotherapists – and of course what support network you already have in your family and friends.

And, of course, this isn't a new rule being forced on everyone, it's an idea which is being tested out and trialled on a few people who agree to taking part.

However, it's also a trial involving real people's lives.

It goes without saying that one serious injury resulting from this pilot could render the whole trial a disaster.

But more than that, this is also potentially a glimpse of the NHS of the not-too-distant future – where more community hospital beds are closed and care is pushed out of professional facilities into homes.

It could be a great future, but only if they get it absolutely right.