A NEW emergency hospital set to be built between Winchester and Basingstoke will provide unprecedented 24-hour consultant care, a meeting heard.

Health chiefs said that the comprehensive care was “unheard of” in the NHS and would not require an increase in overall staffing across the region’s hospitals.

Patients will only travel to the potentially remote new facility by ambulance, bosses told a Hampshire Hospitals Trust roadshow on Tuesday (Sep 30).

The trust runs Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Andover Hospital and Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital.

Dr Andrew Bishop, the trust’s chief medical officer, said the new hospital, which does not yet have a location, will be a central hub for consultants in emergencies.

“Our pledge is that in that hospital you will always be treated by a consultant – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is unheard of in the health service.”

Addressing public concerns about staffing the new hospital, Dr Bishop said that merging intensive care units in Basingstoke and Winchester would prevent an increase and help them meet their pledge on 24-hour care.

He said: “By operating like that the number of staff that we have at present would actually be sufficient. That’s extraordinary. There will actually be slightly fewer intensive nurses needed because at the moment we have intensive care units at both hospitals.”

Hampshire Chronicle:

Dr Andrew Bishop addressing the Hampshire Hospital trust roadshow on Tuesday (Sep 30)

The trust currently employs around 5,000 people, 250 of whom are consultants.

“Nobody really will be required to go there,” Dr Bishop added. “It will be a place where you are taken.

“If you’re going [to hospital] for something and you’re getting yourself there, you will go to Winchester hospital. There will always be the facility there to assess you and make sure you are safe.”

Chief executive Mary Edwards said the trust would develop transport infrastructure for visitors, patients and staff.

“We have to make sure there’s a very good travel plan that enables all of those groups of people to be able to get to this new place,” she said. “We wouldn’t get a planning application through without it.

“The key challenge is for close relatives who have gone [with patients] will think ‘ah, where am I, how do I get back home?’ We need to make sure we’ve got systems in place to enable distressed relatives to get back home after that.”

After the meeting, Dr Bishop said that an estimated 30 or 40 consultants would be on duty at the new hospital at any one time.

The trust hopes that the new hospital could open in autumn 2018 but bosses told the meeting that costs would increase the longer it takes to build.