The new NHS. West Suffolk: a volcano under the wheat fields.

to quality and caring are not enough to transform an NHS waiting room into the lounge for Concorde. Yet the place is warm on a cold February day, the floors clean, the staff polite, the consultants willing to fit their days round patients. The place is West Suffolk district general hospital, the main acute unit for West Suffolk Health Authority, and the time barely a month away from the biggest transformation in the NHS since 1948. Clearly life is not going to change radically on 1 April. This is partly because the government has declared a smooth take off, but geography also limits the scope for change. People at all levels in the district like to characterise West Suffolk as a typical rural area-slow to change. Yet when you probe it's clear that much has already changed, and the district and its two units are probably better prepared than many for