PLANS for a multi-million pound community health hub have been unveiled for the Christchurch Hospital site.

Hospital chiefs revealed the scheme will secure current services at the hospital while adding new facilities for the local community.

Proposals for the Fairmile site include the relocation and expansion of the Grove GP Surgery, the development of a nursing home at the front of the site and key worker housing provided for NHS employees.

There are also plans to introduce a new eye and physiotherapy service onto the site while the Macmillan unit will also remain.

It is hoped that the scheme, which was the preferred option following a consultation last year, will be developed over the next three years.

Richard Renaut, director of service development at the foundation trust, told The Daily Echo: “We accepted that a large number of people wanted to see services at the Christchurch site retained.

“And we have spent the last year working up that option.

“There has been a lot of interest. GPs at the Grove Surgery are very keen on the scheme. There is a big shortage of GP premises in the Christchurch area and the population is growing so there is an obvious advantage to these plans.

“There are less people needing to go into hospital and less need for beds and buildings. There are no inpatient services at Christchurch anymore.

“We know that if we can get these people to come on board – and there is keen interest – then this scheme is viable.

“We are already spending a significant amount of money keeping empty buildings at the standard the NHS requires and there really is no use for them that fit in with modern healthcare standards.”

The trust say the main changes to the site be seen in the buildings not the services with the added bonus of extra jobs and investment in the local economy.

The next stage following the end of the consultation will be to work up a detailed plan and to agree the partners before the planning application is drawn up.

Some ward buildings – J,K,M and possibly H – will be removed in a phased way throughout this year.

Jigsaw Appeal money to aid cancer patients

CHANGES to services could finally see the money raised by phase two of the trust’s Jigsaw Appeal being used to improve facilities for cancer and blood disorders patients.

A £1million appeal was originally launched to refurbish wards 10 and 11, the Royal Bournemouth’s cancer and blood disorders unit, then in 2008 upped to £2m for a completely new unit.

But with the target reached, the money has been sitting in an account for more than two years, with the plans on hold until the RBH and Poole find out which one of them has been chosen for the county’s new haematology inpatient unit.

A decision is expected in May or June, but regardless of what it is, the RBH plans a major development to create a day case and outpatient unit, catering for around 95 per cent of patients.

Director of service development Richard Renaut explained: “There will be haematology outpatients and day cases on both sites, so the new unit would be needed.”

He said wards 10 and 11 would be “completely rebuilt”, doubling the amount of space. “I would love for this to resolve as quickly as possible. It’s been a long saga that none of us would want at all. We’re desperately keen to get on with it.”

Other developments include a move to 24/7 access to angioplasty for heart attacks and having a network for emergency and elective specialist vascular surgery, with Bournemouth as the hub. Plans also involve the maternity teams at Poole and Bournemouth working more closely together to improve the safety and continuity of care, through sharing policies and IT systems.

“Bournemouth does more antenatal that Poole, but Poole delivers 10 times more babies,” explained Mr Renaut.

“The maternity unit here has no back-up from the rest of the hospital.

“The back-up is Poole, so if there are complications, women transfer there,” he added.