A PIONEERING urgent care centre has been declared an unrivalled success which could now be copied out in other parts of Cornwall.
The unit at West Cornwall Hospital was opened a year ago against a backdrop of longstanding fears about A&E services in the far reaches of the county.
Matthew Boulter, Penzance GP and clinical lead at the centre, said it had been good news all the way.
"On the whole people are really happy with what they now have, and rightly so," he said.
"There are no smoke and mirrors here.
"This is something that hasn't cost a huge amount of money.
"It has come about mainly through people working together in better ways."
The casualty department at West Cornwall Hospital had been the focus of concerns about services being downgraded stretching back for many years.
The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT), which runs the site, had originally promised that the unit would be consultant-led.
However, plans to recruit certain grades of doctors had to be abandoned after five rounds of advertisements failed to find a single suitable candidate.
Up until last June the unit had for more than a year been led by a senior nurse practitioner for 16 hours a day, after the contract of a temporary doctor was terminated.
Enhanced
The urgent care centre brought together local GPs and hospital doctors, working together to provide an enhanced service.
Before it launched, the number of cases brought by ambulance to West Cornwall Hospital had been steadily diminishing as the crews took patients from the area straight to the main accident and emergency department at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.
Dr Boulter said that in the course of the past year ambulance traffic at West Cornwall had almost doubled.
"They used to go straight through to Truro because crews could never be sure whether there was a doctor at West Cornwall," he said.
"We have now provided a guaranteed service so crews take the appropriate patients to Penzance, which is often where they want to be."
Over the course of the year, the number of patients seen at West Cornwall has increased by 18,191 – a 6 per cent rise.
Dr Boulter, the clinical lead for unscheduled care at NHS Kernow, the GP-led organisation that has taken over purchasing healthcare on behalf of local patients, said the pilot in West Cornwall had been such a success it could now be rolled out elsewhere.
"We have learnt lessons from what has happened at West Cornwall Hospital and how the model can be used in the rest of the county," he said.