Patients in hospital in Nottingham will be provided with transport if they need to use the £105m pioneering National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) in Stanford-on-Soar to the south of the county. Managers at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) Trust, which will operate the £105 million purpose-built facility around 18 miles away in Stanford on Soar, near East Leake, said that hospital transport would be available to those needing to be transferred.
Concerns had previously been raised by Nottingham's Keep Our NHS Public campaign group about closing services "in favour of much less accessible regional ones". For example Linden Lodge, a 25-bed unit for patients aged 16 and over with a wide range of neurological conditions, will relocate about 20 miles from Nottingham City Hospital to the NRC under the plans. So for patients living in inner-city areas it will mean they have to travel further for treatment.
However, a spokeswoman for NUH said both patients already at the department and those who need the treatment at NRC will be transferred via hospital transport. She said the facility would add an extra step for those leaving hospital.
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The finances for the NCR were formally approved by the NUH board on September 29 and was hailed as a "major milestone" by its programme director Miriam Duffy. "The NRC has the potential to transform the delivery of clinical rehabilitation within the NHS and we continue to work towards welcoming our first patients at the end of 2024," she said.
The 70-bed facility will cost £16 million a year to run and sit alongside the new Ministry of Defence’s Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC), which has transformed Stanford Hall and been built for injured service personnel. It aims to better outcomes for people who have suffered potentially life-changing injury, trauma or illness, "making sure that they can regain a quality of life equivalent to or as close as possible to their life prior to injury or illness". Soldiers injured in conflict receive specialist treatment there after being treated at field hospitals and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, based at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
The DNRC has replaced the former military defence centre at Headley Court, Surrey, which had been around for decades. The construction of the first-ever NHS National Rehabilitation Centre is planned to start in February 2023, with a view to open it in November 2024. It is being funded by the government's New Hospitals Programme and will include gyms, assessment and treatment rooms, social space and rehabilitation flats.
"We have worked with patients and our partners including the Black Stork Charity, the landowners, who continue to support the project, to ensure that the NRC promotes independence, wellbeing and recovery, and its setting on the beautiful Stanford Hall estate will reinforce that ethos,” continued Ms Duffy.
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