Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the recommendation made by KPMG in the Staffordshire Distressed Health Economy report that beds in community hospitals in Tamworth, Longton and Cheadle be reduced.

Both North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Clinical Commissioning Groups have been working to develop community models of care, so that their populations, particularly frail older people who use community hospitals, are receiving rehabilitation care through effective step down services and that where a patient has an exacerbation they can have access to a community bed.