Board sets sights on new hospital
A DECADE after thoughts of building a new hospital in Lerwick quietly slipped away, the idea has been resurrected by Shetland’s health board.
NHS Shetland chairman Ian Kinniburgh said he hoped that plans for a new building to replace the 50 bed Gilbert Bain Hospital would be drawn up in the next two or three years.
He said work needed to start now on planning a new hospital if it was going to built within the next 10 years.
Kinniburgh told BBC Radio Shetland that with hindsight it was fortunate a hospital was not built earlier as it would not have met the islands’ current needs.
However there was now a strong argument to replace the existing 52 year old building to provide a better care environment for patients.
“We are restricted by a lot of the layout in there that gives us real operational problems in the way that we want to configure services and make it feel good for our patients,” Kinniburgh said.
Shetland will have to take its place in a national queue for funding, he said, which meant work had to start now on building a “cast iron case” for a new building.
The board would have to pay the government back the capital cost from its revenue budget, however a new building could save running costs that would make it affordable, he said.
“The way I see it, the cost of maintaining the existing facility is very high and will become higher.
“The restrictions on the way that we can manage services, configure services, deliver things locally are very much constricted by what we have.
“So a new designed facility with real high tech links back to the mainland could give us a tremendous opportunity to cut the cost of delivering services.
“It would be more efficient, more effective and more importantly, provide a far better quality service for patients going forward.”
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NHS Shetland chief executive Ralph Roberts said there were several issues behind the scenes with the existing building that cost a lot of money on maintenance, such as its electrical and plumbing system.
He added that modern hospitals provided more single rooms that offered patients more privacy, which would be hard to do in the current building.
Starting again from scratch would also allow improvements to the way rooms, wards and departments were designed to work together.
“I think there is a huge additional opportunity in terms of the design of the building that would allow the environment that patients felt they were being treated in to be significantly better,” he said.
“We know that the environment in which people are treated can have a positive impact on people’s care.”
Kinniburgh said: “I would like to think that by the time my term finishes that we have a definite proposal sitting on a timetable approved by government with funding effectively in place so that we can deliver a hospital when we need it, rather than run the risk of suddenly finding that the hospital fails to meet our needs.”
The existing Gilbert Bain Hospital was officially opened on 8 August 1961 by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
Building work was completed three years ago on moving Ronas Ward from nearby Montfield Hospital into the Gilbert Bain to accommodate elederly patients closer to medical services.
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