Agenda item

The Committee received a presentation from NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group regarding a consultation they were holding on proposals for a NHS Rehabilitation Centre on the Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate near Loughborough. The Committee was also in receipt of written comments from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland CCGs regarding the proposals. Copies of the presentation slides, the consultation documents and the comments from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland CCGs are filed with these minutes.

The Committee welcomed to the meeting for this item Hazel Buchanan, Associate Director of Strategic Programmes, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire CCG, and Miriam Duffy, Programme Director, National Rehabilitation Centre.

Arising from discussions the following points were noted:

(i)          The NHS Rehabilitation facility would be located alongside the military rehabilitation facility on the Stanford Hall estate. There would also be a National Research and Innovation Hub and a Training and Education Centre on the site. The NHS patients would be treated by NHS staff not military staff entirely separately from the military patients however the NHS patients would be able to use the military facilities. The NHS staff would have access to the whole site including the military area and would be able to take patients onto the military part of the site to use the facilities there. The distance between the NHS part of the site and the military part was approximately 400 metres so it was not far for the patients to travel. It was not intended that equipment would be moved around the different parts of the site.

(ii)         Some of the equipment at the Rehabilitation Estate was genuinely state of the art such as the the Gait Laboratory, and the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) which was one of only six in the world, and. Other equipment on the site, such as the hydrotherapy pool, was not state of the art but had not been available for NHS patients in the East Midlands to use before.

(iii)            In response to concerns raised by members and LLR CCGs that there would be insufficient demand for the facilities provided by the NHS Rehabilitation Centre it was explained that the Centre was proposed to be a level 2b rehabilitation facility and whilst in Leicestershire there were level 1 and level 2a facilities, currently there were no 2b facilities. The nearest 2b facility was in Nottinghamshire. The East Midlands region was short of inpatient rehabilitation capacity and was only able to provide 33% of that recommended in the British Rehabilitation Standards. There were currently long waiting lists therefore the NHS Rehabilitation Centre would fulfil a pressing need.

(iv)           With regard to the comments from LLR CCGs regarding favouring a Home First model, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group clarified that they strongly supported the Home First model, and the NHS Rehabilitation Centre facility was designed to complement the Home First services not replace them.

(v)             Concerns were raised by a member that should the military no longer be involved in combat operations and as a consequence lose their funding for the rehabilitation centre, the NHS patients would no longer be able to use the military rehabilitation facilities. In response reassurance was given that 85% of the military patients that used the rehabilitation centre required treatment as a result of day to day military activities, not combat operations therefore there would continue to be a military need for the rehabilitation centre whether the military was involved in combat operations or not. The military had also committed to using the site to conduct research with the NHS.

RESOLVED:

(a)        That the contents of the presentation be noted;

(b)        That the comments now made by the Committee be forwarded to NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group to form part of the consultation.