OVERWHELMING concerns over hospital services has forced officers to call an extra meeting as they seek support to shape a viable future for the Friarage.

Hundreds of people have turned out as the hospital trust held meetings throughout Hambleton and Richmondshire to discuss major staffing problems and crisis issues at the Northallerton hospital.

After fury erupted in Thirsk following revelations from the Clinical Commissioning Group that the former Lambert Hospital building was being sold instead of redeveloped for community care, the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has offered to hold a further meeting in Thirsk Town Hall on December 20 as part of the Friarage discussions.

Another meeting is still to be held at Northallerton town hall on December 14, from 4pm to 6pm.

Friarage clinical director Dr James Dunbar told Northallerton Town Council they are finding out what people most want and need from the hospital.

“We are finding out what the public most wants us to do. We won’t deliver anything that we consider to be unsafe. I love the Friarage but I won’t run a service I wouldn’t want for my own family," he said.

“We have evidence if you go to a better staffed unit where they experience a lot of trauma you have more chance of coming out alive. Hundreds of people are walking the streets who would not be because of this.

“Increasingly complicated stuff is by-passing the smaller hospitals. So we have to think about what the Friarage is good at - and what we can’t provide successfully we stop doing. Recruitment difficulties are impacting on a number of our service areas including critical care, overnight anaesthetic cover and accident and emergency.

“The Friarage is not going to close - it is a strategically vital delivery point, there is no capacity to take these patients on at South Tees. There will almost certainly continue to be some sort of front of house service where people can self present. How that will be depends on whether we can maintain that A and E unit."

Cllr John Prest warned: "You are going to be a little cottage hospital before long.”

And Cllr Claire Palmer said the majority of local people were dead set against anything else being taken away from the Friarage.