YORKSHIRE Ambulance Service has tried to reassure patients in Bridlington after services were transferred from the town to Scarborough.

As reported in the Mail, patients needing emergency medical treatment are no longer treated at the Bessingby Road hospital in Bridlington.

But Andy Hepton, locality manager for the service, said quality care would still be offered.

He said: "We have better trained staff than we have ever had.

"We are continuing to improve that level of training and continuing to offer more drug therapies and treatments to patients.

"Also, not every patient needs to travel the distance. We are able to treat some people at home.

"The ones we can't can maybe come into Bridlington Hospital for the services that remain here, or other local areas.

"Inevitably, there will be people we take through to Scarborough, and through to Hull, but we are doing that anyway.

"It's not something new to us, we do it in other parts of the county and we do offer a good quality level of care to patients."

The loss of acute medical services is the latest in a series of cuts, which has also seen the loss of maternity services and the cardiac monitoring unit to Scarborough.

NHS East Riding of Yorkshire Primary Care Trust has made a £600,000 investment in ambulance resources to accommodate the moves, with two new ambulances and 14 extra staff, including paramedics and technicians.

Campaigners fought hard to save the services, with more than 39,000 people signing a petition against the proposals before a 6,000-strong demonstration marched through Bridlington in July.

They have voiced concerns over the 22-mile journey from Bridlington to Scarborough, with some believing lives will be lost in the back of ambulances.

But Tony Megson, clinical manager for the Hull and East Riding Clinical Business Unit at Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: "All ambulance personnel are highly skilled clinicians within their own right.

"The treatment that patients will receive in the back of the ambulance, which is basically a mobile clinical unit, will be no different to what it is available throughout the rest of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service.

"The distances between most major receiving hospitals are not dissimilar.

"The distance from Withernsea to Hull Royal Infirmary is more than 20 miles.

"The skills of the ambulance personnel are exactly the same and the interventions they can utilise are the same."