Bristol Royal Hospital for Children Extension

Posted on the 22 December 2011 in Main

Work to centralise specialist children’s health services at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children (BRHC) reached a new milestone when builders complete the steel structure of the extension to the hospital. The extension is being built to accommodate services that will move from Frenchay Hospital.

Children’s neurosciences, scoliosis surgery, burns and plastic surgery services will move to the Children’s Hospital in 2014. All specialist inpatient children’s services in Bristol will then be located together. Dr Jacqueline Cornish, Head of the Division of Women’s and Children’s Services at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Bristol is proud to provide some of the best specialist children’s services in the country at both the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and at Frenchay Hospital. When inpatient services are located together on one site, we will further enhance the high quality care we provide. “The Children’s Hospital will also be in a position to become a nationally designated paediatric neurosurgery centre, cardiac surgical centre, the South West Principal Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Treatment Centre, and the complex scoliosis centre for the South West and beyond.

Frenchay Hospital has designation as a national children’s burn centre and that designation will move to the Children’s Hospital when services relocate here.” Dr Amber Young, Speciality Director for Specialist Paediatrics at North Bristol NHS Trust, said: “The joining together of both children’s inpatient facilities will allow Bristol to continue as one of the highest quality children’s services in the country and further afield.” Builders Laing O’Rourke laid the foundations for the extension in the summer. Now that the steel structure is complete they will make the extension watertight and begin fitting out the insides in time for services to move in 2014.

An extract taken from the “The Month : South - Monthly update for NHS leaders in NHS South of England

December 2011