Plans for a new £18m Eltham Community Hospital are to be tabled this summer, health chiefs have told SEnine.
Work on site is expected to start later this year with a completion date of 2012.
The hospital will be built on land currently occupied by the Eltham and Mottingham Nursing Home in Passey Place. The final residents have now left the home which, along with an adjacent empty house, will make way for the new development.
The community hospital will host a seven day a week GP surgery, ‘walk-in’ Urgent Care Centre, outpatients services and 40 intermediate care beds.
Detailed planning work in Greenwich Primary Care Trust has taken place since the public consultation exercise in autumn 2008.
A major outcome of this work has been to increase the provision for outpatient appointments which will take place at the unit in Eltham, taking pressure off the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary’s hospitals in Woolwich and Sidcup.
Further work has also gone into ensuring the new hospital will host GP services over longer hours, including evenings, Saturdays and Sundays to increase accessibility for full-time workers. It is expected the Court Yard/Well Hall Road practice of Dr Campbell, Kenny and Chauhan will move into the new premises.
The surgery will run alongside a 15 hour a day, seven day a week walk-in urgent care centre treating minor injuries and illnesses, run by doctors, nurses and specialist staff, reducing reliance on the accident and emergency facilities in Woolwich.
Full plans will be lodged with Greenwich Council after the final go-ahead has been given by the Department of Health, expected in June or July, at which stage the public will be able to comment on the designs for the new building.
Money for the initiative includes £4.5m from the government’s initiative for community hospitals; the remainder will come from a public/private partnership. The main aim of the development is to bring health services closer to the community, reducing reliance on major hospitals which will increasingly offer specialist care for major illness.
The two storey building will comprise ‘walk in’ services on the ground floor and 40 ‘intermediate care’ beds on the upper floor for patients needing short-care care for therapy, tests or problems connected with chronic conditions.
An issue to be resolved how to deal with the extra volumes of traffic and demand for parking, which will be submitted alongside the planning application. One solution being touted is to ring-fence some space in the NCP car park beneath Sainsbury’s.
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