£1.8 million upgrade for Stroud General Hospital
20/03/2008
Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT) is gearing up for a £1.8 million investment at Stroud General Hospital to upgrade the operating theatre and endoscopy department so they are fit for 21st century healthcare.
The work at the Hospital is due to get underway later this year and will take between four and six months to complete.
The PCT is reassuring patients that they are committed to providing services as close to home as possible during this temporary period and individual service users will be kept informed on how the alternative temporary arrangements will affect them.
The PCT wants to make sure that as much surgery as possible remains in Stroud whilst the improvement works are carried out.
A state of the art mobile day case surgical unit will be brought in and the PCT hope to confirm a local site for this in the near future. This means that those Stroud residents who would have had their day case procedures performed at either Stroud General or Gloucestershire Royal hospitals can instead have their procedures carried out at the alternative local site.
The site will need to be large enough to provide access for the mobile day case unit and offer good access to water supply and data points.
Stroud residents who would have had their inpatient surgery (i.e. those patients who would have stayed in hospital over night after their surgery) at Stroud General will have their surgery at either Gloucestershire Royal or Cirencester Hospitals. This is because the mobile unit can only be used for day cases.
Stroud patients undergoing endoscopy will have their procedures performed at Cirencester Hospital which is 12 miles away from Stroud. The PCT is confident that patients will experience the same professional service and friendly atmosphere at Cirencester.
Patients due to have endoscopy or surgery will receive clear instructions about where they will be having their procedure done and where to report to in plenty of time.
Chief Executive of Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust, Jan Stubbings said:
“These major improvement works at Stroud General Hospital are really good news and will bring significant benefits to patients when completed. We would ask local people to bear with us while the modernisation work is carried out – we will be working hard to keep disruption to a minimum for patients and ensure that they continue to have access to high quality services during this temporary period.”
NHS staff who provide surgery and endoscopy services at Stroud will continue to provide services to patients during the temporary arrangements.
