SUPPORTERS battling to keep Teignmouth Hospital open are pinning their hopes on a last ditch bid.

Teignmouth Hospital League of Friends has put together a detailed report containing evidence it believes is crucial to keeping the Mill Lane community hospital running.

Next week’s meeting of Devon County Council’s health and adult care scrutiny committee will hear from a task group set up to recommend whether there is a case to refer the decision to close the hospital back to Secretary of State, based on the need for community care. 

Teignmouth Hospital League of Friends prepared its case for the task group, declaring the hospital, the first HNS hospital to be built in the country in the 1950s, was ‘loved and treasured’.

Town, district and county councillor David Cox said the report put the case for Teignmouth Hospital ‘logically and succinctly, a carefully considered perspective’. 

He said: ‘We don’t want our hospital to be a museum exhibit, it’s not because of nostalgia or tradition; Teignmouth Hospital has a real part to play in providing health services for our area.’

The county council task group met Graham Bond, representing the league, in May and during the meeting, a number of issues were raised. 

The 100-strong League of Friends has raised in excess of £6 million in donations over the years since it was formed in 1958.

Most recently it put £697,000 into the hospital’s physiotherapy centre which, the League says, would be money wasted if the hospital were to close. 

The task group was told league members are a ‘highly motivated’ group of people who have held dozens of meeting relating to the future of the hospital.

They firmly believe it would be a ‘waste of resource’ to close the hospital and a move ‘that will be regretted’.

The league pointed out that Devon has some of the fewest community hospital beds in the country.

And it does not agree with the argument that the integrated care model renders community hospitals redundant.

They say it is logical to put rehabilitation beds back into Teignmouth Hospital.

And, it says, in recent years, particularly since the pandemic, there are many people in the community waiting for treatment. 

There is a need to consider the demographic of Teignmouth which has a large older population.

While very helpful to have local treatment, it also improves people’s care and they can get more visitors. 

The league’s report highlights that the hospital has maintenance issues but this it because the site has become increasingly run down. 

While the new health and well being hub planned for the centre of Teignmouth will be ‘helpful’ to patients, the league fears it will become ‘unaffordable and unsustainable’.

It believes a new hub could be built on the site of the old nurses’ home at the hospital which would be ‘the best solution for everyone’. 

The league says the hospital ‘continues to provide a high level of care’ with 3,000 procedures carried out every year in plastics, general surgery, maxilla-facial and dermatology, has five clinic rooms and facilities for occupational therapists, district nurses, midwives and health visitors.

The health and adult care scrutiny committee meet tomorrow, Tuesday, June 13.