The South Gloucestershire Health Overview and Scrutiny committee welcomed plans for the redevelopment of the Thornbury Hospital site (on 14 September 2011).

Background

The Thornbury Steering Group, led by NHS South Gloucestershire, has developed a vision for the development of a health and social care complex on the existing hospital site. This would provide significantly more outpatient appointments to local people, as well as diagnostic services, a modern facility for GP services, community care and enhanced nursing home care - with extra care housing.

Currently, Thornbury Hospital provides an inpatient ward with 20 beds providing rehabilitation, intermediate care and palliative care, a limited range of consultant led outpatients clinics and community services (for instance, physiotherapy).

Two GP practices occupy the health centre and look after just over 14,000 patients and they also act as the medical officers for the inpatient ward (Henderson Ward) for all patients regardless of where they live.

What is proposed?

Under the proposals the new health and social care complex will deliver:

• more outpatient appointments
• offer key diagnostic services such as ultrasound, radiology and, potentially, X-ray services
• a new health centre in Thornbury for local GPs
• an expanded Minor Injuries Service
• extra care housing – self-contained homes for older people with on-site care and support  24 hours a day, seven days a week.  
  

The plans also include the development of a new nursing home on the Thornbury site (owned and run by a charity, community group or private company) with six NHS-funded beds. These beds would be free to patients and provide high quality nursing care, allowing patients to be cared for close to their homes for short periods and avoid being admitted to an acute hospital.

Local residents will also benefit from the development of an additional new nursing home as there is a shortage of such facilities in the area.

Because of the recent developments in healthcare the NHS can now provide intensive support for people with long term or chronic conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, in their own home. We envisage that a community support team headed by local GPs, an experienced matron and nurses, would monitor and manage these patients in the community, thus avoiding these avoidable admissions to hospital.  This support could also enable more people who choose to die at home.

Timescales

It is important to make decisions about the way forward now in order to commence with detailed planning to realise the benefits for the people of the Thornbury area as soon as possible.

Over the coming months NHS South Gloucestershire will be developing ta business plan for these proposals with local patients, stakeholders and the general public.

NHS South Gloucestershire will report back to the health scrutiny committee later in the year with a more detailed timetable for the project and an update on the business plan and envisages that the project will be ready by 2014.

You can read the proposals for Thornbury in our Emerging Themes for Thornbury document.

Local stakeholder groups have given us their feedback on the impact of these proposals and you can read these here.