Almost every patient will have left an historic hospital by the end of this week.

The only patients to remain at the King Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst will be those cared for in its Macmillan cancer unit, expected to close within two to three weeks.

The hospital has been inundated from calls from worried patients across West Sussex since the shock announcement about its closure was made last Thursday.

A rescue package to save the hospital collapsed because developers Lincoln Holdings and healthcare company Capio UK could not agree on the future of the hospital site.

It means about 20,000 pat-ients, up to 65 per cent of them referred by the NHS, have to go elsewhere for treatment and 239 members of staff have lost jobs.

Hospital spokeswoman Tricia Saunders said: "This has been a very sad and difficult time but we have been focusing all our efforts on making sure the patients we have left are getting the best care possible.

"Even when the patients all go there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. We need to go through records, work out what has got to be sent where and ensure everything is securely stored.

"We did our best to save the hospital but in the end we were not able to do so. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us over the years."

Arundel and South Downs MP Nick Herbert is calling for an urgent health summit in West Sussex to discuss the closure and the impact it will have on NHS services in the county.

He said he and other MPs in the county had held several meetings with Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority to raise concerns about the state of the NHS but he wanted to set something up on a wider scale.

Mr Herbert wants to involve health professionals and academics to give people in the county a greater understanding of what is happening to local services.

The NHS is reaching a crisis point in Sussex, with hospital trusts millions of pounds in the red and beds being closed, operations cancelled, patients left waiting longer for treatment and vacancies left unfilled to save money.

Mr Herbert said: "It's long been rumoured the NHS hierarchy thinks there are too many hospitals in West Sussex. If that's true we need these plans to be discussed openly so people know what's in store."