Health bosses preparing critical care centre case

The future of the long-awaited SCCC project was reaffirmed in March by then Welsh Assembly Government health minister Edwina Hart, and planning and preparation work have since begun in earnest.

Such work was suspended in late 2008 due to the economic downturn but was resurrected last year, since when a root-and-branch feasibility study reduced the original cost of around £300m by almost a quarter.

Detailed design work is now restarting to test assumptions made in that feasibility study, with high-level management teams being assembled to run the project.

Also vital to its timely progress and completion is the need to bring other Gwent hospital and community services up to speed to support the work of the SCCC.

The SCCC will be built on the site of the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital, near Cwmbran. It will have more than 400 beds and should be open, barring further delay, by the end of 2016/17.

The flagship of Clinical Futures, originally Gwent Healthcare Trust’s and now Aneurin Bevan Health Board’s long-term hospital services modernisation programme, it will provide emergency and complex treatment and care for the area’s sickest patients.

Clinical Futures, conceived eight years ago, also proposed a network of Local General Hospitals to support the SCCC. One – Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan at Ebbw Vale – is open, with a second at Ystrad Mynach (Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr) due to open soon.

Other new hospitals were originally proposed for Newport, north Monmouthshire and Torfaen, though the much tighter financial outlook means the remainder of Clinical Futures will be reconsidered, to examine how best to provide the supporting secondary care services in these areas.

Newport, for instance, needs a new Local General Hospital to replace the ageing Royal Gwent Hospital, providing services from the latter that will not be transferred to the SCCC.

Quite when this will happen, however, remains to be seen.