DETAILED plans for a multi-million pound health and wellbeing centre to serve patients in the east of Newport are set to be unveiled in the summer.

The Newport East Health and Wellbeing Centre will host GP services and a range of other primary care and community care services, with the key aim of bringing healthcare closer to patients.

A pharmacy, outpatient clinics, and bases for health and social care teams, are among the other facilities that could be included.

It is a project that has been on the drawing board for well over 10 years, but an initial plan was abandoned when the economic downturn and recession of the mid-2000s hit NHS budgets hard.

But the need for a modern 'super-surgery' - as such centres have been dubbed - for this part of Newport has never gone away, and it was named a couple of years ago by Aneurin Bevan University Health Board as one of the top two priorities for primary care development in Gwent.

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The other was a similar project to serve patients in Tredegar, and that is a little further down the road towards realisation - with detailed plans approved.

Work was due to start this month on demolition of most of the former Tredegar General Hospital site, where the new centre will be housed, and it was scheduled to open early in 2022, though the coronavirus lockdown could see that timescale lengthened.

Both projects were among 19 across Wales identified by health minister Vaughan Gething in a Welsh Government strategy in 2017, with funding approval - subject to the completion of and backing for business cases - part of a £68m Wales-wide investment.

It was described as the biggest targeted investment by the Welsh Government in primary and community care infrastructure.

“People in the 21st Century expect to be treated in modern, advanced health care centres that deliver a wide range of services all under one roof,” said Mr Gething at the time.

Preparation of an outline business case by the health board is at an advanced stage, and the current aim is to have it considered and approved by board members, and submitted to the Welsh Government during the summer.