By Andrew Topping, Local Democracy Reporter
A new £17.6m hospital ’emergency village’ including a mini children’s hospital is being planned in Worksop.
The proposals have been years in the making after the children’s ward at Bassetlaw District General Hospital, in Worksop, stopped providing an overnight service in 2017.
It followed safety concerns relating to staffing, with the ward struggling in the past to hire paediatric nurses and other staff members.
It was revealed in 2019 that Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals Trust, the organisation in charge of the hospital, was forced to spend £14,000 a month transferring sick children to Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
Hundreds of children a year have since made the 20-mile journey to the Doncaster site, which has a 24-hour paediatric ward.
But now plans to build a mini children’s ward on the Worksop hospital site have officially been submitted to Bassetlaw District Council.
It’s part of a £17.6m NHS investment to improve the hospital and offer better emergency care to adult and child patients.
Three possible solutions were put forward to the existing issues, including the ’emergency village’ and the mini children’s hospital.
A consultation on the ideas, which ran from December last year until February 2022, showed 84 per cent of nearly 2,000 respondents supported this option.
It features a unit with six overnight short-stay beds, eight assessment spaces and a further one or two treatment rooms.
This would mean 15 or 16 children and young people could receive care in the unit at any one time.
Other options included keeping the current, temporary arrangements with Doncaster Royal Infirmary, or building a unit which closes after 9pm.
Now new documents have revealed all emergency care services would be co-located in the new emergency village.
The unit would be built on part of an existing car park and would be designed to offer a “highly efficient and logically-planned” healthcare setting.
The design of the units will “minimise travel distances for patients” and offer “excellent flow for staff managing patients” from its entrance and reception through to the wards.
A children’s assessment unit would have its own entrance directly from the street, but it would also be interconnected with a paediatric emergency department.
The plans added: “There is a requirement to maintain the existing ED (emergency) department in full use during the building phase.
“The new extension will provide the majority of the acute ED activity and, once the new extension is complete, existing ED functions can migrate to the new building.
“[This allows] existing ED spaces to be refurbished and remodelled for their new use or re-use.
“The Children’s Assessment Unit (CAU) is currently located elsewhere within the site so is not constrained by similar issues and its new location will be completed at the same time as the new extension.”
The plans were first revealed during the 2019 General Election campaign when the then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the hospital.
Speaking on the visit, Mr Hancock said: “It will specifically address the problem of children moving to Doncaster as often as they are.
“It will move the children’s ward next to the A&E so fewer children will have to go to Doncaster and their needs can be met right here in Bassetlaw.
“The concerns raised about the children’s ward will be specifically addressed in this as a commitment.”
It was billed as a “new hospital” by Mr Johnson, although this was played down when councillors discussed the plans in March.
Speaking in Nottinghamshire County Council’s health scrutiny meeting on March 30, Idris Griffiths, accountable officer for the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “We are still trying to manage expectations.
“This £17.6m isn’t a new hospital, but it is a key, really fundamental development that will give us long-term stability for urgent care services and paediatrics.”
David Purdue, Chief Nurse at Bassetlaw Hospital, added: “If you look at attendance for children coming into the emergency department, that drops dramatically after 10pm and is virtually non-existent after midnight.
“By the time this opens, we will have the right establishment.”
