Questions to NHS South East Coast

Dear Sir//Madam,

The BBC today reported that "The future of up to 10 UK hospitals is' in doubt' "and that within NHS South East Coast, in Surrey & Sussex, 5 focus groups had been established to look at the 15 hospitals managed by the nine Trusts in your catchment area and that consultations were due to start in the Autumn.

As your website has no obvious coverage of this would you kindly provide a little more information about the 5 focus groups referred to , in particular who sits on them, how they were selected , who they are managed by and explain their exact brief and timetable for the formal consultations as Autumn is almost upon us.

It would also be helpful if you could provide some precise information about the nature, methodology and scope of the consultation process itself to encourage wider patient and public confidence and involvment in the process as the Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Trust recently decided the outcome of its consultation re. the ' modernisation ' of its 'work services ' in advance while claiming to be promoting ' patient choice'.

You can read more about this on this weblog

Lastly, would you please confirm that NHS South East Coast is going to provide regular updates on the above process through an e-mail newsletter and RSS feed and take steps to see that people interested in the process can get the same regular updates offline.

Please acknowledge receipt .

Many Thanks