The New Hospitals We Need...

I'm NW ....we have a wealth of hospitals within an easy drive to me....alder hey childrens hospital, clatterbridge cancer hospital, broad green heart and chest, wrightington orthopaedic hospital, Walton neurological hospital, Liverpool womens hospital , Liverpool dental hospital, Liverpool hospital of tropical medicine, St Paul's eye hospital...then 4
general hospitals......between me and my children and grandchildren we have used them all over the years ....absolute centres of excellence are the specialist ones .....if I lived in london I wouldn't get better care

Hospitals are no use without staff to man them.

Back in the day there were NHS general hospitals, specialised hospitals, cottage hospitals, mental hospitals, geriatric hospitals and convalescent hospitals. Now that so many hospitals have been closed, no wonder we have bed blockers.

There are far too many people cut loose in the community, with a variety of mental health problems, who would have received specialised inpatient and outpatient care in the past.

sundowngirl

I heard on the radio that in the late 1980s with a population of 56 million there were 300,000 hospital beds. Now the population has grown to 69 million there are only 144,000 beds. Less than half for millions more people. During that time various governments closed down convalescent homes, cottage hospitals etc now wonder there is bed blocking and not enough new hospitals being built

Cottage hospitals and convalescent homes were wonderful aides to the NHS.
I think we can blame both the Tories and Labour governments for the closures and running them down as well as the lack of enough new hospitals.People have been massively let down.

knspol

Whatever happened to those emergency Covid hospitals? I wonder if nothing else they could be used as convalescent type places to help empty hospitals of so-called bed blockers - providing the staff can be found to operate them.

Not the staff - and I imagine many other costs? (Kitchens, emergency care back up, laundry? If the bed blockers are waiting for nursing homes a high level of care is required.

Until recently we lived near on of those outer London hospitals featured on this weeks news programmes. It has always been dire and residents were promised a new one, land was earmarked but, as usual, nothing happened. It was one of the main drivers as we got older for moving far away to another area. It is an awful hospital and I lived in fear of getting old and going into it.

Yes it would be great if they put loads more money into the NHS but they still need more staff and people are not attracted to go into nursing or medical school when the conditions are so bad

I heard on the radio that in the late 1980s with a population of 56 million there were 300,000 hospital beds. Now the population has grown to 69 million there are only 144,000 beds. Less than half for millions more people. During that time various governments closed down convalescent homes, cottage hospitals etc now wonder there is bed blocking and not enough new hospitals being built

Work on renewing Watford General wont start until 2030. By the time its done I'll probably be dead.

When BJ became PM you got shoutec down for criticising him. Now people are criticusibg hin for lying about new hospitals. There must be lits if twi faced people arkund.

Whatever happened to those emergency Covid hospitals? I wonder if nothing else they could be used as convalescent type places to help empty hospitals of so-called bed blockers - providing the staff can be found to operate them.

escaped

Is that CHU Caen Mamie? It does look like a monster from the N814.

It is. Not helped by the fact that they are putting an underground heating system in underneath that part of Caen at the same time.

Casdon

Indigo8

Sarnia

You can build hospitals but where are the staff coming from to run them?

Spot on Sarnia. Working in a clinical role for the NHS is not an attractive option for most people.

There are thousands of unfilled vacancies. It seems that we cannot staff the existing hospitals adequately.

Are these hospitals not replacements for existing sites?

My mistake, I thought this thread was about new hospitals which included new hospitals as well as replacements buildings for existing old buildings - silly me.

Have seen the disaster that is the new hospital that was built in Glasgow it may actually be a blessing these hospitals haven’t been built. Several children died after contracting waterborne diseases due to poor construction and design. I’ve told my family never to let me be admitted to it, I been in it once and never want to repeat the experience, my experience in the very old Royal Infirmary was so much better.

Is that CHU Caen Mamie? It does look like a monster from the N814.

escaped

I agree, Homestead62, that even before they are built, the hospitals are not big enough, but a lot of this is due to a growing population, and the space required for modern diagnostic equipment and start of the art operating theatres. In large cities, especially London, they cannot acquire more land on the site to expand the footprint. What they do do is build upwards, like the new Royal London.

When driving round France I often notice newly built hospitals off motorway junctions or on ring roads outside large cities. France has 3 times the land mass, so they can build large hospital sites, whereas we are more restricted in terms of space and planning applications. And, let's be honest, people would only moan that they couldn't get there without a car.

Our local university hospital in France is being rebuilt because the huge tower block is no longer fit for purpose. There will be one building for in-patients, another for out-patients and lots of separate clinics for different specialisms like dentistry, psychology etc.
In the meantime the road system is chaos, but the tram line does run right through the hospital campus.
It is interesting to see the way the development is going, with the move away from one big building.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202501/medium-100553-download.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202501/medium-707571-new-whipps-cross-hospital.jpg

Sorry, O/P, I'll shut up about Whipps on the thread now. (My excuse is we have passionate structural engineers and architectural boffins in the family!)
Just to show posters, Whipps is from this to this.

With the buildings they have they are doing a good job.

Yes, Whipps had many good points. For example. A & E was much improved in 2012 when it was designated an Olympics hospital. But it's the fabric of the building that is not sustainable. We, the tax payers, are having to shed out for patching up work on the site, whereas a new building will put a stop to that.

DH worked on a multi million pound project in East London to restore and extend a Victorian building. The costs proportionately exceeded those of knocking it down to start again.

Time is of the essence, because, as we all know, building costs will only rise over 10 years.

Apparently they are going to keep the facade of the workhouse.
Apologies, sent too soon.

Whipps Cross is now really quite good. Modern extensions and new xray dept in outpatients.And the staff were very helpful.
And everywhere was clean.
With the buildings they have they are doing a good job.
With the buildings

escaped

By the way, Whipps is actually Wes Streeting's local hospital, if he uses the NHS.

Whipps was a dump when I was treated there in 1986 - completely disgusting. Goodness knows what it is like now.

I think it was built as a workhouse in the 1890s

Astitchintime

Whatever happened to the Nightingale units that were supposedly being set up during Covid?

Most closed because they were set up in other buildings - the London one was in a event centre and was to treat 500 initial patients, rising to up to 4000 and would require 16,000-25,000 staff. It ended up an expensive white elephant treating only 54 patients in 2020.

The few that remained are used by the NHS

So it's OK to build four new prisons but kick hospitals and social care into the long grass?

Astitchintime

Whatever happened to the Nightingale units that were supposedly being set up during Covid?

They weren’t generally new builds, but were adapted use of existing buildings.

Our Nightingale Hospital is a Diagnostic Centre - that's CT, MRI, X-ray, Ultrasound etc. Also, an orthopaedic Centre for hip and knees operations, a Centre of Excellence for Eyes, including cataracts and glaucoma procedures. In addition, early this summer around 10 new consulting rooms were opened for cardiac, gynae, gastro, skin consultations.