PEOPLE involved in road smashes or falls are spoilt for choice if they have their accident in the Maidstone area.

That is what Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is saying in part to justify plans that will effectively downgrade emergency care at Maidstone Hospital.

Maidstone Hospital, it appears, is let down by having hospitals in Gillingham and Ashford on its doorstep and good motorway access.

The residents of Tunbridge Wells do not. Under the trust's plans they will be able to sleep sounder in the knowledge that 999 calls will save them from ambulance trips to the County Town.

At least 40 consultants from a variety of disciplines based at Maidstone Hospital have already expressed concern at moves by the trust, after consultation, to switch orthopaedic trauma operations to the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells.

This was confirmed at a press briefing held to outline reforms, which the trust claims, are essential to ensure the long term future of services.

A discussion document will be launched next month ahead of full consultation on a final set of proposals early in the New Year.

It will set out the issues faced by the trust and why they believe splitting work on the two sites, with Maidstone Hospital dealing exclusively with hip replacements and other pre-booked broken bone or joint operations, is the right move clinically.

Anyone suffering multiple injuries in a road traffic accident would be taken by paramedic crews, as now, to their nearest hospital.

But without trauma surgeons, skilled in dealing with emergency operations, ambulances may decide to head straight for Pembury.

Those patients taken by ambulance or by their own steam to Maidstone Hospital's new £7.1 million emergency care centre would still be stabilised.

But once doctors decide the patient is safe enough to travel, they would be transferred to Tunbridge Wells for further emergency care to repair their broken limbs.

The timing of the move should consultation be successful has not been revealed.

Unlike the proposals for women's and children's services, the trust is using Kent and Sussex as a "halfway house" before moving trauma care permanently to the new Pembury site in 2011.

Trust chief Rose Gibb, said: "We need to improve the quality of services for patients who are having their operations cancelled or delayed because of the way we currently organise these services.

"We are going to have an open discussion with the public about the benefits of creating dedicated specialist units for these specialities and come up with some proposals that improve the quality of care patients receive."