Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust should have learnt by now that local communities are very sensitive to any changes at their hospitals.
If the PCT wishes to carry people with it when it makes changes, then it really needs to consult long and hard.
The move to concentrate specialist elderly care at Witney and Abingdon hospitals has quite rightly generated concerns in Wallingford, Wantage, Didcot and Chipping Norton.
At one time or another, community hospitals across the region have been threatened with closure — and the anxiety remains that the PCT ultimately sees a closure of many community hospitals as its long-term goal.
Pushing change through quietly only serves to increase those anxieties.
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