Two new theatres at QA Hospital to cost extra £1m

A full business case for the development has been drawn up and was presented to the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHT) board meeting yesterday. 

The estimated cost for the two state-of-the-art theatres was £2.74m but it has now been announced the project will cost an extra £980,000. 

Penny Emerit, director of strategy and performance, said the additional expense was due to the need to relocate 53 desks and to fund the extended scope of work on the building.

As previously reported in The News, QA Hospital was awarded £2.74m in funding from the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership earlier this year for the new theatres.

In the business case, it said the trust spent around £2.4m on outsourcing surgery in 2017/18. Some of the cost was due to winter pressures cancelling orthopaedic operations at QA.  

During the meeting, Ms Emerit said the extra cost could come from PHT's 2019/20 Capital Resourcing Limit.

'˜While the costs have increased, the value for money assessment says it is still a value for money scheme,' she said.

'˜The business case is consistent with the STP activity, ambitions and benefits that were agreed before when we applied for the funding.'

The two new theatres will be built in existing space within QA Hospital and it was decided they were needed after STP predictions that surgery at the Cosham site could increase by 8.7 per cent over the next five years.

Also, 13 theatres built in 2009 will be part of a refurbishment programme over the next three years and the two new ones will take on some of the workload.

The work to build the new theatres should take a year.

During the board meeting, non-executive director Gary Hay questioned the extra cost and if it was a concern that the total project was more than expected.

In reply Chris Adcock, director of finance, said: '˜The initial figure was a very early estimation of the scope work that needed to be provided for the STP funding grant.'