Successful bid for national funding

£30 million to expand hospital capacity

We're delighted to share the news that we have been successful in our bid for funding to help expand our hospital capacity. 

In the summer of 2018, we bid for £30 million of national funding to expand the Emergency Department, purchase land for potential expansion and to help us develop a model of intensive rehabilitation.

A huge amount of work has gone into demonstrating our need for extra capacity to help us meet the needs of our rapidly growing and ageing population.  
 
As demand for our services continues to grow, we have to develop new ways of caring to help people stay well and out of hospital in the first place and to help patients leave hospital as soon as they're well enough. 

This funding is a great milestone which will help us to maintain quality and safety for our patients over the coming years. 

1. Integrated Front Door

We plan to expand the Emergency Department and move other services to the ground floor, creating a truly integrated emergency and urgent care service.

2. Expansion land next to the hospital

Purchasing five hectares of expansion land next to the hospital will allow us to explore expanding our services in the future and moving some services out of the main hospital.

3. Centre of Excellence for Rehabilitation

Part of our proposal is centred on how we could develop a different model of care to reduce demand in the future, rather than simply adding more and more beds to the local system.

We're in a great position to integrate services and look at new models of care as we provide both hospital and community healthcare services. One of the new models of care we have been looking at is a model of intensive rehabilitation, which is a popular model of care used in Northern Europe.

There is still work to do on setting out how this could work from a clinical and financial perspective. But if this is something we can make work, it will free up beds in the hospital, which in turn, would support our long term vision of creating a dedicated cancer centre.  

Great news 

While there's still lots for us to work through, this announcement is great news ahead of another busy winter.

We will now start to develop our plans which we're sure will benefit local people and our incredible staff for years to come.