It is disappointing to see local councillors try and create additional concern about our health services and undermine the extensive investment in our hospital and the work done by the teams behind the scenes to redevelop our much loved North Devon District Hospital. This week at PMQs opposition MPs were firmly rebutted by the Prime Minister over their false claims about the hospital programme, as well as by the Speaker for their very poor questions. I will continue to work with the Department of Health and our Hospital Trust to ensure investment into North Devon’s healthcare system.
Selaine Saxby, MP for North Devon, said:
“If the local Lib Dems and the temporary MP for Tiverton and Honiton actually spoke and worked with our NHS Trust, they would be aware of their ambitious plans for redevelopment as part of the New Hospitals Programme (NHP) that is supported by the Department of Health and Social Care.
The Trust submitted its Strategic Outline Case (SOC) for the NHP investment in July 2021. The case describes a vision for North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) with facilities capable of providing modern and digitally connected care to meet the healthcare needs of the local population. The redevelopment plans also include significantly improved health and wellbeing facilities at NDDH, which will support the Trust's aims to attract staff and become a great place to work.
The SOC outline a phased approach to development, to allow the Trust to be flexible and responsive. NDDH has a track record which demonstrates that it delivers quickly and makes the best use of national capital funding when it becomes available for estate redevelopment – recent examples include the new modular ‘Jubilee’ ward for planned orthopaedic surgery to help address waiting lists, built using Elective Recovery Fund money, and the recent diagnostic developments, including a new CT scanner suite.
The SOC describes an estates solution to a digitally enabled future model of care. Phase 0 of the programme was investment into a shared electronic patient record that is the platform for our merged Trust to deliver patient modern care that empowers patients. This launched in North Devon in July 2022, making NDDH one of the first hospitals within the NHP to implement this mew system.
The SOC indicated a build window of 2025-2027 with enabling works in 2024.
The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England’s central programme team continue to work closely with Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust on the development of their scheme. To date, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has received £14.6million in funding for their scheme, £10million of which funded the implementation of a new digital system, including the roll out of electronic patient records across the whole of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
The Trust has received wider capital funding, including £19.6million from our Elective Recovery Targeted Investment Fund announced in September 2021 for estate works and digital initiatives, as well as £6.7million in 2020-21 and £10.7million in 2021-22 from the A&E upgrades scheme.”
