ONE of south Essex's two A&E departments is set to be downgraded under controversial and radical new NHS plans.

Instead, a major emergency trauma centre will be created, either at Southend, Basildon or maybe even Chelmsford.

The shake-up is looking at how Basildon, Southend and Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, will operate over the the next five years. It revolves around a proposal to make £214million of savings within the next four years.

The plan is for one of the three hospital's A&E departments to be used as a major emergency trauma centre - taking only the most serious and life-threatening cases.

Emergency departments in the remaining two hospitals will take less serious cases such as broken bones and more minor conditions.

The Mid and South Essex Success Regime - run by NHS England - is implementing the findings of the Government's emergency care review by Professor Keith Willets which has concluded there should be two levels of emergency care.

The review says there should be major emergency centres delivering specialist care to the most critically ill patients while emergency centres will take care of patients with non life-threatening conditions.

More minor ailments will be treated in the community following a revamp of local healthcare services.

A joint statement issued by the three hospitals said: “Evidence shown in the urgent and emergency care review by Professor Keith Willett tells us that more lives are saved each year through the existence of major trauma centres.

“The national guidelines under the Safer, Better, Faster review by Prof Willett recommend that some expert emergency care should be provided by a designated specialist trauma centre to serve a population similar to that of the 1.2 million in Mid and South Essex.

“This ensures that services can meet nationally recommended staffing levels for emergency medicine and surgery and provide expert teams with dedicated facilities."

The hospitals say emergency departments will remain in some form at the two downgraded centres.

The statement added: “No decision has been made about which site will be designated as the specialist emergency trauma centre and we are gathering the evidence to develop proposals around this for consultation. What is obvious from the demand we continue to see is there is a need for 24 hour, seven days a week urgent and emergency provision at all three sites.

“Over the coming weeks our clinical teams will carry on working together to develop different options around how we can best meet the national recommendations as part of our work under the success regime."

The Essex Success Regime, announced by the Government last year, is one of three improvement programmes being run across the country in areas where there are financial and “deep-rooted, systemic pressures”.