HC Deb 26 February 2001 vol 363 cc436-7W
Mr. Reed

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress he has made on the completion of the new Loughborough general hospital. [149982]

Yvette Cooper

The full business case for the development of Loughborough hospital was approved by the Trent Regional Office of the National Health Service Executive in November 1999. Since that time, Leicestershire and Rutland Healthcare NHS Trust has continued to develop the design and costing of the scheme and was able to confirm in December 2000 that the project programme was on target.

Outstanding issues around planning conditions pertaining to the main hospital site entrance are being resolved.

Work is planned to start on site at the end of February 2001, with a completion and in-use date forecast for early February 2003. It is planned that the bulk of the capital spend will be in 2000–01(£4,020,000) and 2002 (£4,306,000).

Mr. Reed

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the impact of the walk-in centre at Loughborough general hospital on general practitioners. [149978]

Yvette Cooper

The Department has put in place systems to gather monthly management information on the operation of walk-in centres. In addition, it has commissioned a full national evaluation led by Dr. Chris Salisbury at University of Bristol. This began on 1 June 2000 and will report at the end of 2001. Each of the 40 pilot sites nationally is also undertaking local evaluation.

In Loughborough, general practitioners and primary care group support was achieved on the basis that the impact of Loughborough walk-in centre on local GP services would be assessed. To achieve a realistic and effective evaluation a comparison of the "before" and "after" opening positions was considered essential.

Leicestershire Health Authority's Public Health Department began collecting the "before" data in January 2000. When Loughborough walk-in centre opened on July 3 2000, data began to be collected on the impact of the centre on local GP surgeries, the GP out of hours co-operative and a range of other healthcare provider sites.

In order to allow for seasonal fluctuations in both the student population and general healthcare demand, data will continue to be collected for this particular evaluation until the end of June 2001. These will then be analysed between July and September 2001.