Sponsored by
Health chiefs pledge to build the best
HEALTH bosses have vowed to bring the world's best health facilities to Hartlepool's proposed new hospital after returning from a fact-finding mission to the Middle East.
Planning permission for the hospital at Wynyard Park has been granted but plans for the 464m world-class building were thrown into disarray when the coalition Government pulled the plug on funding earlier this year.
Health chiefs vowed to find the money to build the state-of-the-art facility and are confident a funding package will be in place early in the new year with a potential opening date of 2016.
They are now gathering ideas from across the globe to incorporate into the design.
It is understood that the proposed new hospital will cost around 300m and will feature world-leading medical concepts.
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust top brass recently visited the Middle East to look at two medical facilities, one private sector and one public sector.
On a three-day trip they visited the Sheikh Khalifa and the Dhabi City Hospital, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The Sheikh Khalifa Medical City brings a host of medical services together in one setting and has a number of centres of excellence covering primary care, specialist care, dentistry and psychiatry.
The trip was funded by the trust with money set aside for designing and developing the new hospital.
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Alan Foster, who was accompanied on the visit by the trust's chairman Paul Garvin and director of operations Kevin Oxley, said: "To help us identify world-class health facilities which might influence the new hospital we accepted an offer to look at both a private and a public hospital in the Middle East.
"We saw excellent facilities in both places and it was very interesting to see how patients' privacy and dignity was preserved, especially in a place with such a different culture."
The health trust said that the visit gave the team the opportunity to look at how hospitals can attract health-related businesses to relocate around the new hospital creating a health village which they say could bring more jobs for local people.
The revised outline business case for the new hospital will be presented to the board of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust at the end of January.
Support services are likely to be in a building on the same site but paid for a different way through a leasing agreement, although nothing has been finalised.
If the outline business case is approved and supported by the independent regulator of NHS foundation trusts, the scheme could be advertised as early as April this year to attract developers to build it.
The health trust maintains that despite the withdrawal of public funding the need for the hospital was never in question and is still on track to be open around 2016.
Email to a friend
Print this page- VIDEO: 999 call police car ploughs into house
- Toon target set to seal ‘dream’ move
- TRANSFER RUMOURS - Thursday, May 24: Newcastle, Demba Ba, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City deny Tevez rumours, Man Utd, Porto
- TRANSFER RUMOURS - Friday, May 25: Man city, Man utd, Spurs, Arsenal,
- Arrests after trap driver injured
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Hartlepool
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: East
