Assessment unit meets Trust ambitions

The quality of the care environment within a new 16-bedded modular-built ward, the Gilwern Assessment Unit, at Hereford County Hopsital, has won widespread praise from the clinicians and nurses staffing it – many of whom were recruited specially to work in it. The impressive new single-storey assessment unit for frail, older patients – which admitted its first patients just before Christmas – is formed from 14 separate modules erected offsite, delivered individually on low-loaders, craned into position, and then finished and fitted out to an extremely high standard, by off-site building specialist, MTX. The new ward was completed on budget to an extremely tight schedule, met – thanks to excellent teamwork – despite the added complication of the unit being built over a former burial ground. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Hereford County Hospital – I discovered when I met recently there with Graham Vaughan, the capital programme manager at the Wye Valley NHS Trust – is a small 260-bedded acute hospital that serves a catchment area that includes Herefordshire, south Shropshire, and parts of neighbouring Powys. The Trust also operates community hospitals at Leominster, Bromyard, and Ross-on-Wye. The original Hereford County Hospital was built in the 1940s, but underwent a major redevelopment in 1999-2002, with construction of new buildings, and the commencement of a 30-year PFI contract with Mercia Healthcare Ltd. Under the PFI contract, hard and soft FM provider, Sodexo, is responsible for operating and maintaining all of the hospital buildings, while the Trust retains estates risk for mainly older buildings, including two 1940s-built hutted wards originally built for Canadian airmen, office accommodation, a medical records unit, and staff accommodation. 

Bedspace pressures