Health Correspondent, BBC Look North
BBCPatients living in and near Goole say they are travelling up to 50 miles (80km) to appointments that could be held in their local hospital.
For three years, Kelly made four-hour round trips by foot and public transport to take her four-year-old daughter Connie to eye appointments in Beverley every three months.
She has now had the appointments moved to the ophthalmology department at Goole and District Hospital, just over a mile from her home.
The Humber Health Partnership, which runs the hospital, said a “large number” of patients go to other sites to receive specialist care and travel was sometimes necessary to “get the patients to the right clinician as quickly as we can.”
Kelly, a shop worker, said she had to take full days off work to take Connie for her appointments lasting 20 minutes because she relies on public transport.
“I miss a day of work, have to pay for the train ticket, make sure I have dinner, drinks, snacks, something to keep her occupied on the train and then walk half an hour, have her appointment, then walk half an hour back to the train station, which is quite a lot for a four-year-old,” she said.
Now the appointments have been moved to Goole, Kelly said it would take just 20 minutes to walk there.
“I can’t understand why I was having to go through to Beverley so often, when they can do them in Goole,” she said.
“It’s saved a lot of hassle, a lot of money and a lot of stress.”
Ivan McConnell, group chief strategy and partnerships officer for Humber Health Partnership said, while there is an ophthalmology department at Goole, some specialist eye services are only provided on other sites.
“Maybe we should get better at communicating with our patients as to why they are being moved and sent to locations, but it’s really, really important that patient gets the right care from the right clinician,” he said.
Other patients told BBC Look North they fought to move appointments to Goole from other hospitals in Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Hull and Cottingham.
Shirley Charlesworth said she was sent to Scunthorpe General Hospital last year when she had tonsillitis.
“All I needed was some IV [intravenous] antibiotics and they could have done that at Goole. It wasn’t that complicated, but they automatically send you out of town,” she said.
Tracy Hambley said a 93-year-old relative was sent 27 miles (43km) to Scunthorpe for treatment she believed could be safely delivered in her local hospital.
“We sat in A&E with her for 24 hours, then it was another 48 hours before she got back, just for the sake of having some antibiotics and some fluids,” she said.
“If she could have just come to Goole, she would have not blocked that bed at the bigger site for all that time.”
NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) is currently running a public consultation, to decide which services should be available at Goole and District Hospital in future.
Within the consultation documents, the ICB says patients living in the Goole area have 15,000 outpatient appointments per year at the hospital, but travel to other hospitals for about 62 appointments a day.
Campaigners from the Save Goole Hospital Services Action Group have previously said they believe patients are being sent to other sites for appointments as part of a “managed decline” of their local hospital.
Mr McConnell said: “A number of patients travel for specialist care, or services that are provided where we have centralised a range of things to ensure patients can get tests on a day when they see those specialist medics and see those specialist nurses.”
He added: “It’s really, really important that patients ask their GPs if there are appointments available within the hospital. That doesn’t always get offered to them.”
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