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Moves afoot to check out health travel

Beatriz Ayala
5/ 8/2006

MYSTERY shoppers will be hitting the road and testing out public transport as part of a feasibility study into proposed changes to hospital services.

These include scrapping urgent accident and emergency care at Rochdale Infirmary and turning it into a locality hospital.

A team of 10 shoppers will be testing out transport in the north east of Greater Manchester to see whether planned health centres offer easy and convenient access to healthcare.

A total of 10 LIFT centres are planned for Rochdale with the first being built in Deeplish.

The group, made up of people of all ages and abilities, will travel from their homes in Rochdale and surrounding areas to their GP's surgeries, hospitals and sites of the planned new LIFT health centres.

A range of transport will be used including buses, taxis and cars at different times of the day to see how long it takes to reach their destination and return home.

The study is being run by the Healthy Futures transport group and will be fed back into the decision-making body, which will announce the final decision on health service changes in December.

Paul Mainwaring, chairman of the Patients' Council, said: "It became apparent very early on that transport was a key issue of the Healthy Futures proposals.

"People are understandably concerned about the impact the changes to health services will have on their ability to get to appointments by public transport.

"The report back from our mystery shoppers is just one of a number of initiatives being spearheaded by the Healthy Futures transport group.

"Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive is leading on the group's transport research and the experiences of our mystery shoppers will feed into their work to ensure there is good access to healthcare as these major changes are introduced."