HEALTH chiefs have hit back at a "damning" report which claims the future number of hospital beds in Worcestershire would plunge to just 41 per cent of the national average.

The allegation made in Deficits Before Patients, handed in at 10 Downing Street by Save Kidderminster Hospital campaigners last week, has been condemned as "inaccurate and deliberately misleading".

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust says a fundamental flaw in the report is that it has left out the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and all five community hospitals from the equation - amounting to 600 beds between them.

"It's disgraceful that this report misrepresents the facts on the healthcare people of Worcestershire can look forward to when the new hospital opens," said Harold Musgrove, chairman of the trust.

"If the author had bothered to contact us she would have been given the information that is available now.

"The new hospital will be ready on time, it has been planned to have enough capacity to cope with the expected patients who will use it and costs have not risen by 118 per cent."

A statement from the trust claims the report's author, Professor Allyson Pollock, has not taken into account an additional 84 beds which have been added to its new business case.

In response to allegations that the catchment population for the new hospital will rise from 280,000 to 380,000, the trust says it was "never intended to take the whole 106,000 Wyre Forest population as Kidderminster Hospital will continue to support them.

"Only acute inpatient services are being moved. In addition, only a tiny proportion of the people who currently use Kidderminster will go to the new hospital," it says.