Forty NHS hospitals and community services across England are to receive £760 million to modernise and transform their buildings and services.
The funding was announced on 28 March by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt. The DH says it is the biggest investment of its kind in the NHS in over 10 years.
The Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) will receive £300 m to transform local hospital services, which it proposes to use to develop an emergency care site and a separate planned care site, with 24-hour urgent care centres at both sites.
The remainder of the money will be awarded to 39 smaller projects, including:
- £6 m to upgrade the services of eight Yorkshire Trusts.
- £8 m for a new health and wellbeing centre ‘to join up local NHS services’ in Kent.
- £13 m for two new urgent care centres in Newton Abbot and Torquay, and refurbishment of Torbay Hospital’s A&E Department.
- ‘Several million pounds’ for local NHS services in London. The Government is also releasing £150 m ‘to support the NHS’s work to become more efficient’, to be used to:
- improve the use of a digital programme that helps the NHS better use its workforce.
- enable more efficient energy use in hospitals, potentially saving the NHS £12 m/year in the first three years.
- improve pharmacy IT and administration systems to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety.
