The local NHS is reminding people that they have until Friday 15 September 2017 to have their say on proposed changes to hospital-based orthopaedics services across the city.

Since 26 June, people across Liverpool, Knowsley and Sefton have shared their views on the future of the service as part of a public consultation – but it’s still not too late to join the conversation.

People can find out more about the proposals for orthopaedics and share their views online by visiting the current exercises page. 

Under the proposals, which were developed by doctors and nurses from within these teams, specialists in orthopaedics from Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust would be brought together into one single team, working across all three hospital sites to share talent, resources and expertise.

Other changes being proposed include the separating of planned and unplanned orthopaedics procedures onto different hospital sites across the city, in order to help reduce the number of operations being cancelled at short notice.

This would mean that in the future most planned procedures, such as hip and knee replacements, would take place at Broadgreen; while most un-planned procedures, such as when someone needs urgent treatment following a car accident or a bad fall, would take place at Aintree, which is already the Major Trauma Centre for Cheshire and Merseyside.

Doctors working in orthopaedic care across the city believe that this new way of working would allow both parts of the service to be managed more effectively, without emergency care impacting on planned care as it currently does – meaning fewer cancelled appointments, shorter patient waiting times and a better patient experience.

Other major benefits of the proposal include improving patient care, by ensuring that patients see the best specialist to treat their particular condition. The changes would also support local hospitals in their bid to meet new, higher national standards for orthopaedic care, which would help prevent the possibility of some specialised orthopaedics services needing to move to hospitals outside of Merseyside that can meet those standards.

In order for the orthopaedics proposal to take place, some ear, nose and throat (ENT) services would need to be moved from Broadgreen to Aintree, and some urology and general surgery services would also need to move from Broadgreen to the Royal Liverpool site.

The proposals may also mean that some orthopaedics patients and ENT patients would have to travel slightly further for a one-off, planned hospital-based operation or procedure. All pre-operative and post-operative care would continue to be delivered across all three hospital sites, and as close to home as possible for patients.

The orthopaedics proposal is part of a wider Healthy Liverpool vision for transforming hospital services in the city, which could see a number of other hospital services join together in the same way.

The proposal also supports discussions already taking place between Aintree and the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Hospitals about how they might become a single organisation in the future.

The public consultation is being led by NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the organisation responsible for planning NHS services across the city, and is being delivered in partnership with CCGs in neighbouring Knowsley and Sefton, and with Aintree, the Royal and Broadgreen Hospitals.

Visit the current exercises page to learn more about the public consultation and how you can give your views.