Select a region
A campaign group has written an open letter to the Health Minister outlining a number of “serious” concerns about the type of hospital due to be built at Overdale and the future of the services currently based there, including physiotherapy and the Pain Clinic.
The Friends of Our New Hospital had these key questions for Deputy Richard Renouf and the Health Department Management team...
As this will be Jersey’s only hospital are you able to confirm that the ‘Our Hospital’ will be a general hospital, bearing in mind Jersey’s geographical size, population and remoteness from tertiary care in the UK?
Will it continue to be a teaching hospital?
We have read the ‘Functional Brief,’ presumably drafted by you, or for you, as the client for the ‘Our Hospital’ in order to establish your detailed requirements. However, for practical purposes this document is of little value, a comment acknowledged by the project team at our meeting. It was suggested by us that a Scope of Works would be of greater value to that team and indeed it is up to the client of any major project to provide such a document.
The project team indicated that they do not yet have a scope of works and that the absence is causing delays to the planning of the OH project.
Are you, as the client, going to produce a Scope of Works document? If so when and if not, why not?
There is no mention of several critical departments currently provided by our General Hospital and its outstation Departments at Overdale.
Will there be:
Overall, how will patients with debilitating conditions be treated in the Our Hospital?
It is understood that you are planning the decant of Departments and services. currently located on the Overdale site, to the old Les Quennevais school building, starting in January 2022, at an estimated cost of £10 million. It is also understood that demolition at Overdale is to commence at the end of 2021, or the beginning of 2022 and that most of these Departments and services are to be reintegrated into the New Hospital upon its completion in 2026.
Which facilities are to be decanted to the Old School at Les Quennevais and when?
Which Departments and services be returned to the Our Hospital in 2026 and which departments and services are to be outsourced to Primary Care?
What is the detailed programme, including timings, for the decant of Departments and services from Overdale to Les Quennevais and the return, or outsourcing of the decanted Departments and services to the Our Hospital in 2026? Please provide a table showing the details and proposed date for the decanted Departments and services.
Have the existing infrastructure and travel arrangements been considered? If so, what are they and when will you be publishing details of them?
During the Parish presentations on the aspirations of the Jersey Care Model in the late autumn of 2019 HCS promised that there would be further public consultation as the model developed.
Is the consultation going to happen? If so, when, or is it proposed simply to impose these fundamental changes upon the public of Jersey?
The Functional Brief states that the Jersey Care Model is influencing the design of the Our Hospital. However, the aspirations set out in the 2019 Jersey Care Model Briefing Paper of 20 October 2019 have yet to be described and published.
Is it the intention to replicate the UK National Health System of Primary Care?
Which benchmarks are you using to ensure that any changes made are of benefit to the people of Jersey?
Exactly what model of Primary Care is to be developed?
How are the negotiations with the various elements of Primary Care (GPs, Dentists, Family Nursing and Homecare) progressing?
How and when do you propose to inform the public if Jersey of the details and timings of the implementation plan for this new era of Primary Care in Jersey, including its cost, both in terms of staffing and funding? Who is going to pay for the changes once implemented; the patient or HCS?
Is the proposed design of the Our Hospital compatible with the Jersey Care Model, as outlined in your presentations in the autumn of 2019 and the report in support of P114/2020 which point towards the Our Hospital being an acute hospital?
When will the independent Board to oversee the development of the Jersey Care Model, as required by the amendment to P114/2020, approved by the States Assembly on 3 November 2020, be established?
Who will that Board report to?
Where is it to be located and which Department of the States is funding it?
Under the Key Worker Policy there is limited accommodation for junior doctors and Nursing Staff.
Given the implications of post Brexit recruitment from outside the UK, what are your plans for increasing the availability of hospital staff accommodation, particularly for families, in order to meet the increasing staffing requirements for Our Hospital in 2026?
Yours sincerely,
Friends of the New Hospital
