Plans For A New Highland Hospital Moving Forward
NHS Highland have been given the go-ahead to submit an outline business case for the redesign of services in Badenoch and Strathspey.
NHS Highland have been given the go-ahead to submit an outline business case for the redesign of services in Badenoch and Strathspey.
The announcement follows the approval by the Scottish Government Health Directorate’s Capital Investment Group of NHS Highland’s Initial Agreement document.
The document was submitted in June following approval by the NHS Highland board. Since then, work has been ongoing to ensure that all the necessary preparatory work for the outline business case is carried out.
Elaine Mead, chief executive of NHS Highland, said: “Approval by the Scottish Government is a significant step forward and recognition of the huge amount of work that has taken place to get to this stage.
“There is a lot of work still to do but I believe we can progress to the next stage with a great deal of confidence in securing the necessary resources.
“I understand there is a great deal of interest in the proposed new hospital and health centre in Aviemore but this redesign will also bring considerable investment in community and care-at-home services and in some new ways of working in our care homes in Grantown-on-Spey and Kingussie.
“A project board which includes community representatives has now been established and will meet quarterly, and I will be expecting the board to ensure that the project is delivered on time and budget.”
The Initial Agreement is the first of three documents required to be approved as part of the business case process. The next step in the process is to complete the outline business case, which will then be followed by a full business case.
A site has still to be purchased for the new hospital but it is hoped that this will be done early in 2016/17. Current estimates are that construction work on the new hospital could get under way to build in autumn 2017 and be completed by autumn 2019.
Meanwhile, work will progress to develop community services and step-up/step-down beds in care homes, and discussions and information gathering on transport and access issues will continue.
A further round of meetings with local communities and groups is being arranged.
Public members on the project board are Badenoch and Strathspey councillor Jaci Douglas, Grantown-on-Spey resident Alex Murray and Mairi Palmer, who lives in Newtonmore. All three are also members of the development group which will continue to meet throughout the duration of the project.
Councillor Jaci Douglas welcomed the announcement and said: “This is really positive and I delighted to see that we continue to make progress. Clearly, securing a site is going to be the next important milestone and will allow us to progress with more detailed planning around transport and access.”
“I also welcome NHS Highland’s ongoing commitment to involve local people and keep them informed. While there are going to be lots of new developments many things won’t be changing such as the location of Grantown and Kingussie health centres. I am also really excited about some of the potential new ways of developing care-at-home services and it is going to be important that we now start to test these out locally.”