THOUSANDS of patients in the east of Newport are set to benefit from a £26.2 million plan to create a health and wellbeing centre providing a range of family doctor, dental and other services under one roof.
After almost 15 years of stop-start planning - frustrated by economic downturn, recession and tightened budgets for health spending - approval is being sought from the Welsh Government for the building of a Newport East Health and Wellbeing Centre.
The centre is proposed for land at Ringland currently occupied by Ringland Health Centre, along with adjoining land owned by Newport City Council.
An artist's impression of the proposed Newport East Health and Wellbeing Centre
Indeed, the project also involves Newport City Council, with the overarching idea being to house comprehensive health and social care services in the same building.
And if the timescale proposed in an outline business case (OBC) to be submitted to the Welsh Government is met, the centre will ready in just three years’ time.
Two existing GP surgeries - Park, in Chepstow Road, and Ringland Health Centre, would both be based in the new centre. Between them they cater for the needs of more than 15,000 patients, but their premises are each described in the OBC as “particularly poor, with no room for expansion and in need of replacement”.
There is significantly increasing demand for GP services too, in an area of deprivation and with some of the poorest health, and biggest health inequalities, in Newport and the surrounding area.
Bringing the surgeries together under one roof with pharmacy, enhanced dental, and a range of other services that currently cannot be provided at existing premises, will result in improved provision for patients across a large area of Newport.
And siting social care services on the same site will enable stronger links to be developed between health and social care, for the benefit of patients.
A number of such health and wellbeing centres already exist in Gwent, notably in Brynmawr and Blaenavon, while plans for one in Tredegar are well advanced too.
But the Newport East centre will be Gwent’s biggest, a reflection of the needs of the people it will serve, and the services it will contain.
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The Newport East proposal is a priority of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s primary care strategy, and Bick Wood, director of primary care, community and mental health, said the Welsh Government had indicated outline support for the project.
“It is part of our overall estates strategy for the development of integrated service hubs which provide services closer to people’s homes, and in areas where we have got poor health outcomes and higher levels of deprivation,” he said.
The existing Ringland Health Centre in Newport. Picture: Google Maps/Streetview
“The proposal has been discussed for a number of years in conjunction with Newport City Council and Newport City Homes.”
Of the area’s existing GP premises, Mr Wood said they “have long been unable to provide the sort of integrated service provision that we are seeking through the primary care plan that we have got in Gwent”.
“This is an exciting development and provides a huge opportunity to bring services together and provide care closer to home to quite a vulnerable population, in an area of quite significant deprivation and health inequality.”
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