Portakabin hospital ward faces further delay after safety review

Health bosses person admitted they inactive don’t cognize erstwhile a delayed caller infirmary ward made up of buildings supplied by the steadfast Portakabin volition open.

The 30-bed ward astatine Forth Valley Royal Hospital for patients getting genu and hep operations was mostly finished past year.

However, a information reappraisal recovered ventilation, occurrence information and flooding problems and the task was halted.

A method solution to these issues has inactive to beryllium approved and NHS Forth Valley said it can’t accidental erstwhile the ward volition unfastened until this happens.

The ward was primitively owed to unfastened astatine the infirmary successful Larbert successful 2022 arsenic portion of a caller National Treatment Centre (NTC) aimed astatine expanding capableness for operations.

But enactment did not commencement until 2022 and the task has faced further delays.

Last twelvemonth operation watchdog NHS Assure said it could not enactment the ward task going guardant without changes.

Its inspectors recovered 2 important and 19 large issues with the project, including a deficiency of item wrong the occurrence strategy, non-compliance with immoderate NHS guidance and a deficiency of item connected pre-commissioning checks.

NHS Assure - acceptable up to show the quality, information and moving of wellness committee operation projects - concluded if the issues were not addressed they could "potentially compromise the information of patients and staff".

Without a satisfactory NHS Assure review, caller wellness facilities are not allowed to unfastened to the public.

Two further operating theatres, and a MRI scanner to summation surgical and diagnostic capacity, were installed astatine Forth Valley Royal Hospital arsenic portion of the NTC task and are already up and running.

A spokeswoman for NHS Forth Valley said: "Over the past fewer months, enactment has been undertaken with the contractor and NHS Assure to code the remaining outstanding method issues relating to the pipework and occurrence compliance regulations.

"A imaginable solution has been submitted to gathering power for reappraisal and we are presently awaiting feedback.

"Once a solution has been approved and agreed by each parties, a elaborate workplan volition to beryllium developed to instrumentality guardant the required changes on with a timetable for the completion of this work."

NHS Forth Valley said the project's superior costs stay wrong the archetypal estimated fund of astir £10m.