GORSEINON HOSPITAL: The beds were coming back by March, then by September. Now the plan is that they never do

The 30 beds moved out of Gorseinon Hospital “temporarily” a year ago would never come back, under plans the health board has now put to the public.

They left West Ward for Singleton on 1 October last year with a promise they would return by 31 March, a deadline that slipped to 30 September when the board’s chair and chief executive faced councillors in April, insisting: “We are not closing this hospital.” Days before that second deadline, Swansea Bay University Health Board has opened a seven-week engagement on never bringing them back, a year and a day after this site first revealed the beds were leaving.

For patients in western Swansea, it would mean step-down care, the bridge between a Morriston stay and home, staying at Singleton for good. The board’s own engagement document concedes what that costs: for some families the beds will be further away, and parking at Singleton may be harder than at Gorseinon.

What Gorseinon would get instead, the board says, is a strengthened community health hub. Everything already running at the hospital stays, from blood tests and district nursing to the Parkinson Centre and stroke clinic.

And the emptied ward has not stood idle. Cardiac rehabilitation, community psychology, midwifery clinics, pulmonary rehabilitation and the base for Lymphoedema Network Wales have already moved in, “temporarily, subject to the outcome of this engagement”, in the document’s words.

Sexual health services could follow, and the board is asking Gorseinon residents what else they would like based in the town.

The beds went in the first place, the board says, over what its senior clinicians called “red flag” risks to patient safety: agency workers covering up to half of some shifts, delays spotting deteriorating patients, reports of bullying, and inadequate security on an isolated site.

Since the move, its document says, patients have had doctors on site around the clock, and closer scrutiny at Singleton found problems that had gone unnoticed at Gorseinon, including pressure damage and delayed safeguarding referrals.

An unannounced Healthcare Inspectorate Wales visit in May found every patient surveyed rated Ward 3 good or very good, the board says, while listing improvements still needed, from call bell response times to dignity and privacy.

Money runs underneath it all. Agency and bank staff cost nearly £681,000 at Gorseinon in the seven months before the move, against £375,000 at Singleton in the seven months after, a gap the board puts at £530,000 a year, with out-of-hours security at Gorseinon costing another £85,000 on top.

The document returns again and again to the same phrase: the board is “spending money we don’t have”. Our reporting in June put a figure on that: £112m overspent in three years, and a formal black mark from the auditors.

No jobs are at risk, the board says, though some staff would move base for good.

Gorseinon has fought for its beds from the start. When the move was first proposed, ward councillors pressed the case “forcefully” for inpatient services to stay, and a Save Services at Gorseinon Hospital petition gathered hundreds of signatures.

The board’s pledge that day in April, “we are not closing this hospital”, is now the promise the town gets to test, in person.

The first chance is next Wednesday, 16 September, at a drop-in at St Catherine’s Church in Gorseinon from 2pm to 7pm, followed by another at Swansea Grand Theatre on Tuesday 22 September, also 2pm to 7pm.

Online question-and-answer sessions run on Thursday 1 October from 9.30am and Monday 12 October from 6pm, booked by emailing SBU.engagement@wales.nhs.uk or calling 01639 683355.

Views can also be submitted through the board’s online form. The engagement runs alongside Llais, the national body set up to give patients a say in Wales, and closes at midnight on 26 October. The board decides after that.

For a town that was promised its beds back twice, the next seven weeks settle what Gorseinon Hospital becomes instead.