Transferring Southport’s emergency department to Ormskirk would mean moving seven other services – general medicine, critical care, elderly medicine, respiratory medicine, medical gastroenterology, urgent diagnostic haematology and biochemistry and liaison psychiatry.
Ten other services “may be affected”, bosses said.
The cost for this has been given as £91m.
By contrast, the plan said, the children’s A&E could transfer from Ormskirk to Southport with just one other service, paediatric inpatient care. at just over a third of the cost – £33m.
It would also take two years less to carry out.
But Ormskirk also runs the maternity service for the area.
If these changes go ahead, it would be on a different site from paediatric inpatient and both A&Es.
Women giving birth without the back up of an emergency department is the main reason being given for proposals to reduce maternity services at the nearby Liverpool Women’s Hospital, but the potential costs of moving maternity and other paediatric services have not been included in these proposals on A&E.
A three-month consultation attracted more than 5,000 responses.
The independent report evaluating them concluded: “Across nearly all questions, the Ormskirk option is viewed more positively by the overall respondent population.”
Of the clinical staff who responded, 40% supported both A&Es in Southport while 49% were against.
By contrast 49% supported the Ormskirk option while 32% were against.
But proportionally far more people from Ormskirk and Skelmersdale responded than people from Southport.
Because of this, the organisation compiling the final report, the Centre for Health Communication Research, also carried out a telephone poll of 507 residents across both areas.
This poll favoured moving both services to Southport Hospital, with 40% in favour.
Just 35% of those polled by phone wanted both A&Es both to be based in Ormskirk.