Even though it is six years since our A&E department closed many people are still uncertain about how to obtain help in an emergency. 
As the Primary Care Centre (PCC) and Minor Injuries Unit (MIU) now share the same premises further confusion arises. 
I have passed these concerns on and the Primary Care Trust has issued a press release about how to access emergency health services out of working hours. Since the Government agreed the GP's current contract, out-of-hours means before 8am and after 6.30pm on weekdays and all weekends and bank holidays - a large proportion of the week!

To summarise:

NHS Direct is for telephone advice - tel. no. 0845 46 47.

The MIU [Minor Injuries Unit] is a turn-up-and-wait service for minor cuts and injuries not suitable for your GP in working hours or the PCC out-of-hours, and not severe enough for an A&E department.

The out-of-hours PCC is for requests for urgent help when your GP's surgery is closed - tel. no. 0845 609 0669.

Calling '999' is the action to take at home, at the scene of a severe accident or if somebody with you is suddenly taken severely ill.

Because of specialist nurses, paramedics, emergency care practitioners and experts in palliative and psychiatric care, there is now less need for many emergencies to be seen by a doctor and, as staff in these categories increase, more people will be cared for in the community and only those who really need an A&E department or hospital admission will get that far.

The snag is it is often extremely difficult, particularly in an emergency situation, to select the appropriate route to emergency care. As I have been saying for so long it would make the service much more user-friendly and able to cope with a wider range of emergency conditions which would ease the strain on the A&E departments at Worcester and Redditch, if a doctor was available not only in the PCC but also in the MIU for 24 hours per day. The recent rumoured threat to x-ray services at Kidderminster would be self-defeating.

However we are still much worse off than other acute hospitals that have lost their A&E departments but have retained doctor-led urgent care centres. We still do not have what the Government defined in their document published after our election revolt, "Keeping the NHS Local - a New Direction of Travel", as the minimum for a downgraded acute hospital, "a 'first port of call' (a service able to receive [emergencies] and provide assessment, initial treatment and transfer where necessary)".

In my wider work I am supporting other acute hospitals faced with reconfiguration to retain realistic emergency services more comprehensive than ours. 
Consequently I will continue to press for enhancement in our emergency services. 
It is only fair that we should have the same range of services that other similar and smaller communities have.