Agenda item

38.1.      The Board considered a report seeking endorsement of the Building for Our Future (BFF) Programme Strategic Outline Case.

38.2.      The Board asked whether the hospital will be developed in a way to make it future proof.

38.3.      Joe Chadwick-Bell said that the Building for our Future project involves East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (ESHT) understanding where it wants to be as an acute and community care provider in 10 years’ time and developing a hospital that will enable that transformation. There is, however, a lot of transformation work to do before the hospital is built that cannot wait for the buildings to be finished, such as the cardiology and ophthalmology reconfigurations. The Trust will also continue to develop a separate five-year capital programme and will begin some transformational capital work through that process where possible rather than wait for the BFF funding.

38.4.      Tracey Rose, Programme Director, added that the Trust has modelled demographic and non-demographic demand for healthcare up to 2035, after which point it becomes more difficult to model accurately. The Trust is also working with the New Hospital Programme’s (NHP) national team to help ensure the hospitals have flexible design, which is part of the requirement. The Trust will also work with the other 40 hospital trusts receiving funding to see how they plan on developing their hospital sites.  Any new hospital will need to be able to last 60 years.

38.5.      The Board asked about the decision making process for signing off on the new hospital.

38.6.      Tracey Rose said that ultimately the Treasury decides whether the Trust should get the funding, but prior to then ESHT will have to get assurance from NHP, NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care. The Trust is aiming to submit its full business case to the Treasury by March 2023 and a decision is expected six months after that, however, it will depend on there being no further delays to the process.

38.7.      The Board asked whether the development of the new hospitals will include developing centres of excellence for particular services, such as for frailty or older people.

38.8.      Joe Chadwick-Bell said that the hospitals are already configured the way they are to make sure that resources and clinical expertise available to ESHT are focussed in specific areas where practicable. The exceptions to this are cardiology and ophthalmology, which have proposals for their future being developed in the coming months. The fact that the county has such an elderly population means that the care the hospitals provide is already built around older people and the frail, so it is not necessary to create a specialist hospital for older people.

38.9.      The Board asked for confirmation that the building plans will include an Emergency Department (ED) that triages patients at the front door.

38.10.   Joe Chadwick-Bell confirmed that the BFF includes an integrated Emergency Departments (ED) that will be able to provide people on arrival with the care they need in a single place according to their need.  There is also already Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) at the current EDs that will be replicated at the new hospitals.

38.11.   The Board asked how much Bexhill Hospital will be developed, given the site’s central location between Eastbourne and Hastings.

38.12.   Joe Chadwick-Bell said Bexhill will be a rehabilitation centre containing both inpatient beds and community rehab services in recognition that not all rehab requires admission.

38.13.   The Board asked whether en suite wards affect the loneliness of patients and asked how this may be managed.

38.14.   Joe Chadwick-Bell said single rooms have risks but many advantages. ESHT is learning from other trusts with high numbers of single rooms, such as Pembury Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, to understand how staff need to be deployed differently than they are in dormitories, due to the different way of caring for patients. ESHT does have some single wards but they tend to be for infectious patients or patients needing end of life care and requiring more privacy. NHS England has indicated that the new hospitals will need to have a ratio of single to dorm wards of about 70:30 and the new hospitals will need to reflect this. 

38.15.   Tracey Rose added that the outline business case, which is the next step in the BFF programme, will seek the views of patients and the public on matters such as single wards and the issue of loneliness and will take these comments on board.

38.16.   The Board RESOLVED to strongly endorse the Building for our Future Strategic Outline Case.