Planned Closure of St. Marks Minor Injuries Unit in Maidenhead

So I’ve just come back from the Minor Injuries unit at St. Marks Hospital in Maidenhead where I received wonderful and speedy treatment. The staff are friendly and helpful, the waiting areas clean and tidy, the quality of nursing care superb, and the facilities ideal........yet inspite of this, the unit’s under threat of closure in the New Year.
It beggars belief really - for the place is clearly popular with locals and provides an excellent, efficient service. It means that patients can get treated for minor injuries speedily without having to go through their GP. And it helps relieve the pressure on local A&E departments.
So you would think, wouldn’t you, that all in all, everyone would be satisfied with this situation?
But as far as I can understand it, the GP’s are having to fund the unit and are finding it expensive. So even if the system works really well for all parties, it may not be allowed to survive purely because of a funding issue.
So from the New Year, if the unit does indeed close down, patients like me will either have to waste everyone’s time by going to our GP- who will then presumably refer us on to someone else for appropriate treatment - or clutter up the country’s already overstretched A&E departments.
It all seems so counter-intuitive, particularly when a system works well. But isn’t that so often the case nowadays.....anything simple that works well gets over-hauled until it’s complicated and less user-friendly. More’s the pity.