What happened next

Based on the clinical evidence and the feedback from the consultation, in January this year, we agreed in principle to go ahead with the proposal to create these four specialist centres.

However, because of the current economic climate, in February we announced that we had to put our plans on hold for the centre for inpatient surgery for urology and lower gastro-intestinal cancer at Dewsbury and District Hospital. We intend to re-visit these plans at some time in the future.

Until we can revisit plans for the centre in Dewsbury, patients will continue to receive urology surgery in Wakefield, as they do now. Surgery for patients with cancers of the lower bowel, will continue to be carried out in both the new Pinderfields Hospital and Dewsbury and District Hospital.

Since this decision, we have been looking at how we could still go ahead with the plans to create the other three specialist centres in the new Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, without bringing together urology and gastro-intestinal cancer surgery in Dewsbury.

What will this mean for patients?

We have worked with our hospital doctors and believe that the best option is to change the way we look after some patients with emergency medical problems. Medical patients are people who need hospital treatment but don't need an operation.

This will mean that some patients from Wakefield and Pontefract who need to be admitted to hospital with emergency medical problems will be admitted to Dewsbury and District Hospital.

There is no change for emergency medical patients from north Kirklees.

How are people in the Wakefield district with emergency medical problems cared for?

When the new hospitals are fully open, patients in the Wakefield district with emergency medical problems will usually be admitted to the new Pinderfields Hospital or the Clinical Decision Unit in the new Pontefract Hospital.

However, as happens now, when one of our hospitals is busy, patients sometimes need to be admitted to a different hospital so that they get the care they need as quickly as possible.

Currently, about 600 medical patients a year from the Wakefield district, out of around 22,000 medical patients that we care for each year, are treated in Dewsbury and District Hospital.