A DISAPPOINTED health boss has issued a personal plea through your Worcester News for as many people as possible to become members of a new Foundation Trust (FT).

John Rostill, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, confessed he was “desperately disappointed” by membership so far.

He said people had taken the membership forms away but had not filled them in.

So far, under 500 people have joined – he was hoping for more like 5,000 public members to go alongside the 5,000 staff members who will be enrolled automatically the day the trust becomes a FT, unless they decide to opt-out.

Mr Rostill hopes more people will sign up at two public meetings at Worcester Guildhall in the High Street on Wednesday, one at noon and one at 7pm.

People who do join the FT will be invited to meetings, can sit in health workshops and open days and can stand to become members of the council of governors which is designed to hold hospital leaders to account.

The meetings are about the acute trust’s plan to become a FT which will give staff, patients and the public more of a say in what happens at the county’s three main hospitals – Worcestershire Royal in Worcester, Kidderminster Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

Mr Rostill said: “What’s so surprising is that so relatively few people have completed the application form.

“I think people don’t like form-filling. Some people say the document is complicated but I don’t necessarily believe that. Perhaps they want time to think.

“We have had hundreds of people take it home to fill it in and take it back and dozens say they will take it home and get friends and colleagues to complete it but I have to say, if that’s happened, they must have got lost in the post.

“I’m desperately disappointed and bewildered.”

Mr Rostill said he wanted as many people as possible to take a stake in their hospitals and influence the future of healthcare by signing up.

The trust would become a Foundation Trust by May 1, 2009 at the earliest.