THE new medical director of Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust has vowed to develop a different way of delivering high quality healthcare for county's people.

Dr Andy Sant has joined the trust from a similar post in Plymouth and brings with him a wealth of experience having trained and worked as a GP.

He has also run a community frailty unit in Plymouth and hopes to use this experience and knowledge to ensure that more elderly, vulnerable patients in Worcestershire receive the care and treatment they need at home or in the community.

“One of my key aims as medical director is to help develop different ways of delivering high quality healthcare for the people of Worcestershire”, said Dr Sant.

“Predominantly this is about finding new ways of working between the trust, GP surgeries and the county council, which among other things will help identify different ways of looking after the frail elderly who are currently finding their way into the acute trust which is not always in their best interests.”

The trust provides a wide range of services including support for parents and newborn babies, speech and language therapy, mental health services, sexual health services, community nursing and therapy teams and community dental services. It also runs the county’s five community hospitals and minor injury units.

He said: “I am really delighted to have joined Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust. I have come from an organisation providing a similar range of services, but despite this I have been astounded at the breadth of the services provided.

“Over the coming years, the trust needs to drive major changes forward within an ever-decreasing financial envelope. We want to do this in a way which maintains the excellent standard of services already being provided across the portfolio and in all parts of the county and while this is clearly very demanding, my first impressions, and the reason I applied for the job, was that the trust is very well placed to make this work.”