The letter was reportedly sent by the New Hospital Programme team, which oversees the Government s plans for “40 new hospitals”. Campaign group Herts Valleys Hospital, which is calling for a centrally built hospital instead of rebuilding Watford General, claimed the wheels have well and truly come off the bus . Spokesman Steve Day said the trust should now take stock of what is affordable and deliverable as opposed to the previous decision that inappropriately ruled out building on clear sites and took no account of cost .
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She explained how the three hospital model being proposed broadly retains the existing services.
“A substantial new build at Watford would bring fantastic opportunities to improve services. In our new facilities we are hoping to have significantly more single bed impatient rooms. We are looking at 75 to 80 per cent of all in-patient accommodation in single rooms.
“St Albans will be our main surgical and cancer care site. It already is the site where we do a lot of planned surgery and we want to develop and enhance that service offer at St Albans. One of the key things we want to do at St Albans is improve and increase the amount of diagnostics provision there to support planned care pathways and a much better coordinated model.
By Deborah Price Local Democracy Reporter - Hertfordshire
What a redeveloped Watford General Hospital could look like. Credit: West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust Plans for the rebuilding of Watford General Hospital and redevelopment of two other hospitals on existing sites have been backed by a county council watchdog group. At a meeting of the West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust health infrastructure plan topic group on Monday, the group discussed the trust s preferred option to spend the majority of government funding on refurbishing Watford General Hospital. The topic group, working on behalf of Hertfordshire health scrutiny committee, agreed with the broad proposal and rationale for the rebuild of Watford General Hospital and the redevelopment of St Albans City and Hemel Hempstead Hospitals on the existing sites .
The way it should work is that the CCG are ensuring that it s delivering what the county needs, and that it s financially prudent, et cetera. The trust should be coming up with plans that work for everybody, that s the theory. In practice, that doesn t happen. The point at the moment is, have they given it the right due diligence to get to this point? Up to this point, there s been scrutiny by one of our sister campaign groups, who have taken them to court in a judicial review. That was a high court judge saying when you arrived at your strategic outlying case, which is one of the three formal stages, you did that in the wrong manner.