Health  Service  Forum  South  East

Minutes of the Health Service Forum S.E.  regular meeting of the 12 February 2008 at 7.30 p.m. in the Larkfield Centre, Govanhill

Contents

Guest Speaker – Alan Seabourne

Report on GG&C Health Board meeting 19 February 2008

Apologies

Minutes

Correspondence

Guest Speaker – Alan Seabourne

Margaret Hinds welcomed the guest speaker Alan Seabourne, Project officer for the new South Acute Hospital to be developed on the existing Southern General Hospital site. Mr Seabourne gave a clear, concise presentation accompanied by a series of projected slides illustrating the site of the new children’s and adult acute hospitals. He also answered questions from the audience.

Work has already started on the extension to the Maternity unit and it is planned that the extension will be ready for patients 2009/2010.

The new Children’s hospital to replace Yorkhill will be built adjacent to and linked to the maternity unit. It will have 240 beds and include an A&E department. It should open in 2013.

The adult acute hospital will be an integrated building to the children’s but 14 storeys high with the helipad on the roof. The adult A&E will have a separate entrance. In order to build on this site it will be necessary to drive piles down to rock face -  a depth of thirty metres. The adult hospital will accommodate 1109 beds. This number plus the children’s beds and 630 existing beds on site will total 1979 excluding the mental health village. The largest hospital in Europe should open in 2014!!

New laboratories will be built and linked to the new hospital complex by an underground passage. There will be multi-storey car parks on site.

At present the plans for the adult hospital show that the majority of patients will have a private room with en suite. There will be some four-bedded rooms. The design could well change once a contractor is appointed. All rooms will have a good view and there will be IT equipment in each room.

Questions put to Mr Seabourne

Q 1. How many staff will it take to run the hospital? 10,000.

 A nursery/crèche is being developed on or near the site.

Q 2. Will there be day surgery at the new hospital?

No, this will carried out at the new Victoria ACAD for all of the south side.

Q 3. Surely there will a continuous flow of goods and services into and out of the hospital grounds to service such a large undertaking?

Yes, this will have to be taken into account in the construction of the buildings.

Q 4. Will there be an improvement to the public transport to and from the SGH?

Discussions are on-going with the Glasgow City Council transport and environmental planners regarding transport. The new fastlink service will pass through the site entering from Govan Road and exiting via a new entrance in Hardgate Road.

Note the fast link will be of no benefit to the S.E. residents who have to attend SGH.

Q 5.  The ACAD is an American system which requires distance of not more than 10 minutes from the nearest acute hospital at the busiest time of day. The American system also inspects the patient’s home to ensure that it is suitable for a patient to return to and a nurse is allocated to the patient to ensure phone contact is available 24 hours a day. The Victoria ACAD does not meet this time scale.

Mr Seabourne’s colleague was asked to respond. She replied that before patients are admitted to an ACAD for treatment, they are carefully examined to ensure that they are in a fit state to cope with the proposed procedure.

Q 6. Many patients do not like single rooms on a number of counts a) isolated from human contact b) loose the security of a nurse station in sight. c) an en suite is acceptable but will there be sufficient cleaners to ensure they are cleaned properly? Toilet/shower facilities are frequently in a poor state at present. d) Having a view from every room is not a priority as one is either in such a short time or one is too unwell to see out of a window. 

Mr Seabourne replied that these issues were not part of his remit. He is there to do a job as directed.

Q 7. The Forum wrote to Mr Seabourne to ask whether there will be a sprinkler system installed in the new build.

The reply was that I have included an allowance in the cost plan for sprinklers to be included in the design.

The chair thanked Mr Seabourne and congratulated him on his excellent presentation and his clear responses. Asked if he would return at some future date if requested he said he would be happy to accept our invitation.

Report on GG&C Health Board meeting 19 February 2008

On Tuesday 19 February the Outline business case was put before the members of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board meeting by Helen Byrne, Director of Acute Services, Strategy, Implementation and Planning. She emphasised that the bed modelling will continue. ‘This is an iterative process.’ a phrase used extensively throughout the Health Board meeting. The draft Outline Business plan was presented to the Capital Investment Group which met on the 26 February and will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval in March.

The project will be publicly funded and at present stands at £841.7 million. The breakdown is;

Our comment;  It is disturbing to see that already there is an increase in costs of £41.7m. Are we facing another Scottish Parliament?

The meeting continued with the standard agenda.

Apologies

Apologies were received from Eric Canning and Dan MacPhail.

Minutes

The minutes of the 11 December were accepted as correct and the adoption proposed by Pat Lally. There were no matters arising.

Correspondence

A) On the 19 December a letter was sent to the Health Minister regarding the December 2007 Health Board meeting. This meeting started at 9.30 a.m. and by 1.15 p.m. was only half way through the agenda. Several board members had to leave because of other commitments. It was very evident that there was sufficient business to support a monthly Board meeting instead of the regular bi-monthly.

A reply was received from Christopher Roberts of the Health Delivery Directorate, who encouraged the Forum ‘to raise aspects directly with the Head of Board Administration, John Hamilton, to discuss and work through your concerns at a local level.’

B) We wrote to John Hamilton on the 15 January to point out that the telephone number of the new Beatson at Gartnavel is not easily found in the telephone directory. We were advised to phone the Gartnavel switchboard number 211 3000 in order to access the Beatson. We also received an assurance that a member of staff will be meeting with Communications staff to review NHSGG&C entries in telephone directories and this will include the incorporation of a phone number for the West of Scotland Beatson Cancer Centre.

C) A letter was sent to Nicola Sturgeon asking for an Independent Scrutiny Panel to be set up to look into the plans for the redevelopment of the SGH especially in the light of the findings of ISPs on the closure of A&Es at Monklands and Ayr Hospitals, as the reasons the Panel gave for reversing the decisions were exactly the case for the south side of Glasgow.

A reply was received from Christopher Roberts reiterating the statement from the Minister that she would not be re-opening issues that had already been passed by the Scottish Executive.

D) An e-mail was received from the Middlesex Hospital BeCad advising that the review of the BeCad set up is expected week commencing the 18 February. We are still waiting further information!

The meeting was brought to a close at 9.30 p.m.

The date of the next meeting is Tuesday 11 March at 7.30 p.m.

Our guest speaker will be Lisa Hughes of the Bridgeton CAB office to talk to us about how the Citizens Advice Bureau is dealing with complaints about the NHS.