Dawlish to become centre of excellence for urgent care

Published: 26 November 2015

From 4 January 2016, Dawlish Community Hospital will provide an improved service for the treatment of minor injuries, becoming the area’s centre of excellence for urgent care. The service, based at the community hospital’s minor injury unit (MIU), will be available 8am to 8pm seven days per week, 365 days per year.

To enable this greater service provision, the existing MIU and x-ray facility at Teignmouth Community Hospital will merge with the MIU at Dawlish Community Hospital to create one top-class facility for the local population. The MIU at Dawlish, run by a team of qualified and experienced nurses, already provides excellent, local treatment for a range of minor injuries and ailments and has all of the state-of-the art equipment needed, including x-ray. The extended opening hours will ensure that local people have convenient, daily access to high quality care closer to home.

Dr Adam Morris, Deputy Medical Director at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, commented: “It makes absolute sense to combine the resources – thereby securing the future of a safe, accessible, and local urgent treatment facility.

“The area’s two minor injury units are only four miles apart and whilst they both offer a great service we have seen a decline in the number of people using Teignmouth MIU. MIUs are staffed by specially qualified nurses who need to treat enough people each year to ensure they maintain and develop their skills, as well as contributing to staff retention.

“By bringing the two services together at Dawlish we are able to provide people with what they want – an enhanced service with longer opening hours.”

Joining the area’s two minor injury units is the first phase of the developments and improvements to health and care service taking place across Dawlish and Teignmouth. Earlier this year, South Devon and Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group undertook an extensive 14-week public consultation to consider a number of proposals that would strengthen and secure the long-term future of the two community hospitals in the area.

The plans include establishing Dawlish Community Hospital as the centre for medical inpatient beds for the whole locality and will be the new location for Devon Doctors’ out-of-hours service. Teignmouth Community Hospital will become a specialist rehabilitation unit – making the best use of its excellent rehabilitation gym, occupational therapy and physiotherapy suite.

Dr Matthew Fox, South Devon and Torbay CCG joint clinical lead for the Coastal locality, said: “We’re delighted that people across the Coastal locality will benefit from Dawlish Community Hospital being a centre of excellence for urgent care.

“The aim is to create healthcare facilities for the Teignmouth and Dawlish areas that will improve the lives of generations, now and for the future.”