Nightingale hospital cost NHS £26m

A POP-UP hospital in Bristol that never saw a coronavirus patient cost the NHS more than £26 million.

Viewed as an insurance policy for hospitals across the region, the Nightingale was set up in less than three weeks last April to provide up to 300 intensive care beds.

But by June it was placed on standby and soon NHS leaders were looking at other uses for the facility. It was used for assessments and treatments of more than 7,000 non-Covid patients before it closed on March 31 this year, and is now being decommissioned.

The NHS confirmed last year that England’s seven Nightingales cost £220 million to set up. Together with the running and decommissioning costs, the final bill will be more than half a billion pounds.

Figures from North Bristol Trust, which managed Bristol’s Nightingale hospital, now reveal the facility cost £15.6 million to set up and around £1 million a month to keep running.

Contracts were awarded in a matter of days – the University of the West of England would host it and Kier would convert Frenchay campus exhibition centre.

Reflecting on the process in a video for UWE’s Bristol Distinguished Address Series in October, vice chancellor Steve West said he received a call on March 25 last year, Army surveyors came the following day, then on March 27 “things really kicked off ”.

He said: “I was required to make the decision as to whether or not we would hand over the exhibition centre for this purpose and that was probably one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. We set sail hoping that it would never, ever have to be used.”

Kier was the main contractor. Operations director David Snell said NHS England had challenged him on March 26 to pull a team together, he gave a presentation and that night was told he had been successful.

“Mentioning the Nightingale hospital in any correspondence or conversations ensured at that time that we got a high level of commitment, and it couldn’t have been easier to marshal the troops,” said Mr Snell.

Marie-Noelle Orzel, who was the Nightingale’s chief officer, had worked in Iraq and in the Balkans but said setting up Bristol’s coronavirus field hospital was a unique experience.

“What I think was very different about the Nightingale was the pace,” she said on the Bristol Distinguished Address Series video. “With these projects you usually monitor progress using months and years – we didn’t have that luxury.”

Ms Orzel said the hospitals in the Severn network had managed to cope with their capacity but the Nightingale had remained as an insurance policy.