IT SEEMS the past couple of years we’ve heard one story after another about North Yorkshire’s health services being axed, reduced or moved out of the county altogether.

At times its felt like the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton is fated to suffer death by a thousand cuts.

Residents here have only been able to watch with dismay as consultant-led maternity care and paediatric services were moved and, more recently, learned that rehabilitation beds at the hospital’s Rutson ward will also go.

It seems no rural community is exempt from NHS cuts at the moment, as the announced closure of The Lambert Hospital in Thirsk demonstrated.

So news that £95,000 is being invested in new lung services at The Friarage Hospital is a very welcome surprise.

The hospital will be getting new specialist imaging equipment, increased theatre capacity for lung surgery and outpatient clinics.

The new service is designed to make cardiothoracic services “more local and more responsive” and will benefit patients now and in the future.

It’s a great result for North Yorkshire’s rural communities.

Patients from Hambleton and Richmondshire – who currently face the long journey to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough – will now be able to be treated closer to home – not something we have often seen in the past few years.

While it’s no guarantee that the hospital’s future is guaranteed forever, it shows some kind of commitment to the longterm future of the much-loved Friarage Hospital.