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Just a few weeks ago, the government was criticised for a lack of transparency over how it selected the 40 “new hospitals”.
HSJ has now seen the longlist of potential options NHS England put forward for selection in 2020. All projects that were announced were on this longlist, except for two.
The first had been among the 40-odd hospital building projects on the Health Infrastructure Plan the year before, which were all carried forward.
The other, County Durham and Darlington’s project, had neither been on the HIP, nor the NHSE list of options.
A Conservative MP had been elected to its “Red Wall” constituency for the first time in its history the year before. Richard Holden, a former adviser on Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign, had made rebuilding Shotley Bridge community hospital one of his key pledges.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock, who visited the community hospital a month before it became one of the 40 “new hospitals”, denied there was any political motivation behind the decision.
Leaving it too late?
Ministers have named the 30 trusts to receive a share of a £250m fund to deliver improvements in urgent and emergency care this winter.
The fund is part of the commitments made earlier this year in the NHS urgent and emergency care recovery plan.
The money will be used to create 900 “new” hospital beds ahead of winter, which includes more than 60 intermediate care beds, improve assessment spaces and cubicles in accident and emergency departments, and develop or expand urgent treatment centres and same day emergency care services.
Trust leaders have welcomed the extra funding, but have said it is coming too late – the extra capacity is not set to be in place until January. They also raised concerns about how the extra beds would be staffed.
London has seven bids approved – more than any other region in the country, for a total of £47.8m. However, schemes in the Midlands will be getting more investment, at £59.8m, despite only having five bids approved.
Also on hsj.co.uk today
This fortnight’s The Download newsletter discusses the problem of poor pay for NHS tech jobs. Meanwhile, US company UnitedHealth has been given a provisional thumbs up from the Competition and Markets Authority for a £1.2bn purchase of EMIS, which is perhaps best known for providing thousands of GPs with electronic patient records. And the shortlist for the 2023 HSJ Awards has been released, including the details of the six providers competing to be named “trust of the year”.
