Hybrid hospital is built
By Agnes Rose
Medical skills and facilities on offer at a new £100m West Midlands hospital are tipped to make it a magnet for private patients in the area.
Building work on the long-awaited Harborne Hospital, Birmingham, a joint venture between HCA and the NHS, is now completed and specialists are looking forward to working there in early January 2024.
According to Leighton Chumbley, the boss of healthcare property developers Prime, it will be the most technically advanced private hospital constructed outside of London.
Claire Smith
Hospital chief executive Claire Smith, vice-president of HCA Healthcare UK NHS Joint Ventures, said: ‘It’s been a huge collaborative effort to get to this milestone moment and I want to thank everybody involved for their dedication to this innovative project.
‘For HCA Healthcare UK, work only continues now and at pace to ensure that, come January, this impressive building is an even more impressive hospital, equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities, with teams of skilled medical professionals and leading consultants that will make the hospital the destination for high-quality private care in the region.’
The 50-inpatient bed, four-theatre hospital will also have two floors with 72 NHS inpatient beds through HCA Healthcare UK’s partnership with the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
Julian Miller, the trust’s chief financial officer, said the hospital had ‘world-class facilities’ for the people of Birmingham and Solihull.
Peter Manners-Smith, fund manager at M&G Real Estate, called the project an excellent example of how private sector capital could be used to build exemplar facilities.
He said: ‘By financing the construction through long-term leases, we have also been able to generate sustainable long-term returns for our investors and benefit retirement savers.’
Facilities include:
Four theatres, including a hybrid catheterisation laboratory;
Two minor operating/endoscopy suites;
44 inpatient beds,
Six ITU beds;
16 day-case beds.
