Newest hospital set to open four months early
WALES’ newest hospital is to open four months ahead of schedule, the Welsh Government has announced.
The Grange University Hospital, Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran, will officially open in mid-November this year, ahead of its original opening date of March 2021.
The £360m facility will provide emergency and urgent care to the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board area, services previously provided at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport and Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething said the early opening would help the region cope should a second Covid-19 spike hit Wales.
Part of the hospital has already been made ready to receive patients should the health board require the additional capacity, although no patients have yet been admitted to the site.
Once open, the 60-acre hospital site will boast a 471-bed capacity and feature a 24-hour specialist assessment facility, intensive care facilities, and comprehensive diagnostic facilities, inpatient beds for major emergencies and complex surgery, and theatres.
Some services will remain at the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall Hospitals including diagnostic tests, therapies, minor injuries treatment, and midwifery-led birthing services.
The Welsh Government said these will join Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan, Chepstow and county hospitals which are able to provide the majority of care for their local communities.
Mr Gething said the early opening is possible because building work sped up when it was thought the site would be needed to deal with the first wave of the pandemic.
“We accelerated some the work because this site was a possible option as a field hospital for Gwent in the first stage of coronavirus,” he said.
“We knew that in accelerating that work to make it available as a field hospital, it would give us the possibility of opening the site early as well.
“We weren’t due to open the Grange until spring next year. This now means that this brand-new purpose-built hospital will now be available for the winter.
“That’s really good news for people across Gwent, regardless of what they need to come here for, whether Covid-related or not.
“I’m truly grateful to everyone who has made today possible with early opening, on budget, of this brand new hospital.”
Judith Paget, chief executive of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, said she was “delighted” the hospital will be opened four months early to help respond to winter pressures and a potential second wave.
She added: “The centralisation of our specialist and critical care services at the Grange University Hospital will provide increased resilience for our services, extra flexibility of having 75% single rooms to treat seriously ill or infectious patients, additional capacity to ventilate patients requiring critical care and make better use of our staff resources to deliver the highest quality of care to our patients.
“We are very grateful for the support we have received from Welsh Government, our staff, partners and the public as we work towards the opening of the hospital and implement significant changes to the way we deliver our NHS services in Gwent according to our long-standing Clinical Futures plan.”