Design update for our new Women and Children’s Hospital

You will be aware that our multidisciplinary design team has been working on designs for both our new Women and Children’s Hospital and the Pathology (Microbiology) relocation.  We had hoped to be sharing these new designs at divisional briefings this month; instead we have an exciting update which means we need a little longer to be able to unveil the new look.

Essentially, we have agreed with the New Hospital Programme to adopt and embrace more of the New Hospital Programme’s Hospital 2.0 standardised approach, something we’ve strived to do since we announced our preferred new location.

Working with the NHP team, we believe there is even more value we can add to our designs by further exploring and incorporating more of Hospital 2.0 design principles. This is especially true following a review of the design and capacity modelling by our own Business Intelligence team alongside NHS Cornwall system colleagues and the New Hospital Programme. 

Making this shift means that our scheme benefits in many ways. It means that we can be part of the Hospital 2.0 Alliance which ensures us a dedicated construction partner. (There are 10 contractors in total who have signed up to deliver schemes on behalf of the New Hospital Programme.) 

It also means that our new hospital will benefit from economies of scale and efficiencies with the programme timeframe, because our hospital design can be delivered via a standardised hospital design template, using tried and tested modern and sustainable methods of construction, and collaborative partnership working across other Wave 1 new hospital schemes.

But it does mean we have to wait a little longer to see what our amazing design team has created as they tweak our new hospital designs to fit the more standardised programme scope.

Our aim is to showcase the designs to colleagues across RCHT in the early summer.