Community hospitals are polyclinics by another name

When I read the article by Finch,¹ I realised that our trust, and many other rural trusts, has been running polyclinics for decades—except we call them community hospitals. We run 11 of these in small Dorset market towns. They are usually within a few hundred metresof the local general practice, and the general practitioners are variously involved from managing beds, doing minor operations lists, gastroscopy sessions, etc. Consultants from all the local hospitals run clinics in the community hospitals, and surgeons perform a sizeable number of operations there. Several of the hospitals have small mental health inpatient unitswith community mental health units based there. The hospitals provide physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and a range of diagnostic services. Many elderly patients can be investigated or, if necessary, admitted which prevents admissions to acute hospitals and the small size allows innovative joint working between old age medicine and psychiatry.

Perhaps the most important thing is they are hugely popular with staff and patients alike, and hospital friends’ groups have raised sums in excess of a million pounds to invest in a local hospital for which they feel a real sense of ownership. If polyclinics are to become a successful development, perhaps the key is to create them only when there can be clear benefits for patients, primary care, and secondary care, and for all three groups to participate in the planning and designfrom the outset.