‘£60m of urgent hospital repairs vital for patients’
URGENT repairs costing up to £60m are required at Wrexham Maelor Hospital to prevent significant disruption to patient care, it’s been revealed.
Officials from Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board have met to discuss serious infrastructure issues at the facility in Croesnewydd Road.
A report published by the board said the ageing nature of the buildings had led to the supply of power, water, heating and medical gas being obstructed on several occasions in recent years.
In 2017 a leaking roof and ventilation failures at the hospital’s day surgery and endoscopy unit resulted in an emergency closure affecting almost 2,000 patients.
It meant the board had to spend £1.6m to rent theatre space in England, as well as hiring two mobile units.
Senior figures said problems were beginning to occur more frequently
FRUSTRATION AS HEALTH BOARD STILL NOT HITTING SAVINGS TARGET
THE chairman of north Wales’ crisis-hit health board has voiced his frustration as it looks set to incur a deficit of £35m this year.
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has been in special measures since 2015 and has faced increasing scrutiny over its poor financial performance.
The trust experienced a shortfall of just over £41m in the last financial year, and while this year’s figure is expected to be lower, it’s still £10m above the target set by the Welsh Government.
At a meeting, former North Wales Police chief constable Mark Polin said he was not confident it would meet the goal.
Mr Polin, who took up the lead role on the board last year, also with three complete power outages in the last two and a half years.
As a result, they have drawn up a business case for improvements worth between £50m and £60m to prevent further disruption to frontline services.
In a report, Rod Taylor, director of estates and facilities, said: “The fundamental issue which this case seeks to address is as follows: there is a high and increasing risk of physical infrastructure failure at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, which could have an adverse impact on patient care.
“The underlying cause of this risk is the age and condition of the estate.
“As outlined earlier, of all of the health board’s estate, the Wrexham Maelor campus will take the most investment to bring it up to modern expressed concerns after discovering some groups of senior officials set up to come up with savings ideas were failing to meet on a regular basis.
He said: “We currently are not on track to deliver the original deficit target of £25m in part because expenditure is burning more quickly than the savings programme.
“The financial adviser who is retained by me describes a real concern about improvement groups.
“As I understand it, the workforce one hasn’t met, or if it has then it’s only met once.
“Bearing in mind that your expenditure is running through the roof, we’ve got concerns about savings plans.
“I’m not sure what confidence we standards. The overall poor condition of the site includes major engineering obsolescence, which is now resulting in frequent breakdowns.
“As time passes the likelihood of more, and more significant, failures will only increase without substantial investment.”
The health board currently spends about £700,000 per year on maintaining the hospital.
It highlighted a rough estimate of £54m for the outlined repairs, but a larger amount of £284m is needed to bring the site up to modern standards.
It is anticipated that £14m will be required to replace the hospital’s existing electrical system, while £23m has been earmarked for ventilation upgrades.
Around 35,000 inpatients and 260,000 outpatients are treated at the hospital each year.
However, officials said it was running at full capacity with average bed can gain in the current situation.”
In June a statement was issued by the Welsh Health Minister in which he outlined his own concerns about the board’s money problems.
Vaughan Gething said he was disappointed Betsi Cadwaladr had failed to achieve its deficit target for 2018/19.
According to a report presented to board members, the trust has already overspent by £14.6m this year, which is £3m higher than anticipated.
The main reasons are said to be a failure to achieve savings and excess spending on the use of agency staff in secondary care.
A recovery plan has now been put in place in a bid to meet the latest goal set by the Welsh Government. occupancy levels reaching 94 per cent on acute wards, compared to the 85% figure recommended by the Wales Audit Office.
At the meeting held at Conwy Business Centre in Llandudno Junction on Thursday, Mark Wilkinson, executive director of planning and performance, said: “This is the first part of our commitment to redevelop Wrexham Maelor Hospital.
“This business case seeks to address some of our highest and most immediate risks that we have on the site.
“We’ve seen over the last couple of years a disproportionate number of power outages that clearly have the potential to impact on services.
“This business case seeks approval for £54m and it is a revenue-neutral business case.”
Board members unanimously agreed to approve the business case for submission to the Welsh Government.
Chief executive Gary Doherty said the board had an obligation to cut back on expenditure.
He highlighted a case where staff helped to achieve savings of £140,000 by reducing the amount of antibiotics given to patients.
He said: “We have a big ask this year to go from £41.3m to £25m, but fundamentally there are big opportunities for us.
“Every penny that we can reduce our expenditure by appropriately is a penny we are duty bound and should put all our efforts into delivering.
“We met one of the teams which has done some work around infection control and they’ve saved £140,000 by not giving antibiotics to patients who don’t need them.”