Future Fit: 'Progress being made' on hospital shake-up plans, says Shropshire health boss
Progress is being made on the plans to shake-up hospital services in Shropshire and NHS bosses will start to access funding 'imminently' to draw up an outline business case, a health boss has revealed.
It emerged last November that the Government had approved £6 million in funding 'in principle' to allow Shropshire's Future Fit hospital reshuffle to push ahead to the next stage.
The long-awaited project will separate emergency and planned care in the county, with Royal Shrewsbury Hospital housing the main A&E department and consultant-led women and children’s services.
Telford's Princess Royal Hospital will become a centre for planned care and will have a scaled-down ‘A&E Local’.
Funding for the next stage of the plans had been awaited, before engaging external professionals to help complete the outline business case.
The cash is being sought to engage architects, mechanical and electrical engineers and specialists in civil engineering, project management, transport and healthcare planning, to put in place final designs and planning proposals to enable applications to be made for the work.
Speaking to Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Groups' governance boards at a virtual meeting on Wednesday, CCG joint accountable officer David Evans said some progress is being made.
He said: "The trust has been given £6 million to develop the outline business case.
"There have been a number of meetings over the last couple of weeks with colleagues in NHS England/Improvement, Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) and the system around how we can start to make significant progress around that.
Escalated
"I know SaTH are about to pull down the first element of that £6 million to enable them to develop the outline business case.
"That will include schedules of accommodation to a fairly significant degree but is about implementing the clinical model, which will address some of the concerns in relation to the Care Quality Commission and sustainability of clinical services in the longer term.
"Nonetheless we need to address some of those concerns in the short to medium term.
"I feel it is making progress but probably not as quickly as we would have liked. But part of the problem was the trust didn't have the money to develop the outline business case.
"That has been cleared now so they are going to start drawing down the first tranche of that £6 million imminently."
Hospital bosses say Future Fit, which is now called the "hospitals transformation programme", will deliver safer care and better outcomes for patients, reduce cancellations of planned care and the amount of time people stay in hospital.
The project was originally earmarked to cost £312 million, but due to inflation and other costs that figure has escalated to much more.
