Goodbye Luttrell Memorial Hospital

The old Luttrell Memorial hospital is about to close. Its beautiful - and Listed - facade will soon be locked up and the walking wounded of the town will not be able to roll in for stitches or plastercasts or a quick pee in decent loos. Its slightly down-at-heel but very characterful interior will soon be stripped out and left to its dust and memories. The ridiculously confusing rabbit-warren of squashed- up and squeezed-in departments will soon be silent and empty - bar the occasional drip through the added-on flat roofs round the back. No longer will a patient needing transfer from Theatre to the Ward need to be folded into the too-small-for-the-trolleys lift. No longer will the Casualty staff (sorry, Minor Injuries Unit staff) be able to hear every scratch and sniff of every patient in the miniscule department by just standing in the middle of it. No longer will the secretaries and admins have to twist around up steep narrow stairs into their eyrie  rooms.

The Powers that Be, before this recession kicked in, organised a magic wand and built a New Hospital and recession or no bloody recession, we are about to move a mile away along the coast a bit to Our New Home.

They had an Open Day at the new hospital this morning. It's on the outskirts of the little town (pop 14000 on a good day) instead of right in the middle where the old one is, so the shoppers will have further to go to Casualty (must remember to call it Minor Injuries Unit) when they fall over.  And the inebriated will have further to stagger when they fall over. 

The new hospital is an extraordinary colour - range of colours - and to be honest is not very pretty from the outside.  Looks to me like someone with art deco ideas built a warehouse, changed his mind and lost the plot and then slapped the remains of varying shades of blue paint on the front to make the whole thing look 'arty'. There's a purple bit round the side but fortunately most people won't see that, except for the residents of the houses just beyond the perimeters on that side. They'll have already planted their fast-growing Leylandi in self-defence.

But - there is always a 'but' for better or worse and this is a better: there is parking.  Lots of patient-parking (there was absolutely zero at The Old Luttrell Memorial). And there's a fair amount of Staff parking too (beats the dozen or so spaces at TOLM) although some of these spaces are rather bizarrely marked 'for shared cars only'. I think it's for people who give other people a lift in to work. I give that idea six weeks before it's ignored.  The local bus, when it has detoured into the local Tesco store will then come right up to the glass entrance of the new hospital. So far, so good. You can do your outpatient appointment and your Tesco Trip in the same morning.

Inside, the place gives a visiting patient the feeling that this is a Proper Hospital. Massive reception hall, wide corridors, a children's play area and an airport lounge of a waiting room. There will apparently be a television screen though goodness knows what they will have showing on that. If there are arguments over who has the remote at home there's going to be a riot in there with 50 people waiting. Rather too many of the seats do not have 'arms' to help a person rise from them and the lime green colour is faintly nauseating but no doubt they'll get decorated with blood and sick and chewing gum before very long - this is, after all, not only All Outpatients/X-ray/Physio but also the Casualty (sorry, MIU) waiting area.

Access to the consulting areas will be by staff escort only and the staff are going to have to remember to have with them at all times their 'ID swipe cards' which have to be used to get through all the electronically-secured doors. I ought to have mine tattooed onto me to save hassle.  Everything smells so lovely right now - wood and clean air.  You wait - six weeks in and it'll smell just like any other hospital. 

The corridors are, compared with the Luttrell Memorial site, very wide and light and airy - and extremely long. The poor cleaners are going to be exhausted. There are only two levels for patients - I did find a third but it appears to house the starship Enterprise and is out of bounds except for the maintenance techies. The Ward (politically correct, with Male and Female sides) is wonderful - lots of single rooms, one four-bedder, all kitted out with ceiling-mounted rails for hoists, all with windows (don't laugh but there truly weren't windows in one of TOLM's ward rooms and it housed 9 patients) and all with televisions and telephones by each bed.  People aren't going to want to go home.

The Operating Theatre looks brilliant, can't wait to go and play with those lights and that great big washing machine thing and all the swinging kit that comes down from the ceiling. I think the Powers that Be might like to redesignate the Fire Escape route, however: at present it's marked to go right through Theatre and I'm sure that's not appropriate ...

As for the Rehab - 'Therapy' - department ... Their gym is supplied with everything an olympic-training athlete could want, never mind some post-op knee or hip patient. There's even a trampoline. And there's this dinky little kitchen where the occupational therapists can assess that patients are able to make themselves a meal or a cup of tea back home.  Staff, however, according to Matron, will not be allowed to have tea or biscuits or their lunch anywhere except in the designated area. So if you're really busy and can't leave your station that's tough luck, I suppose. I give that idea about six weeks, too. 

There's a mental health unit on the ground floor and lots of things TOLM didn't have: enough storage space, fancy artwork (to be seen to be believed, whose idea were the balls on sticks in the courtyard?) and a real state of the art alarm system.  Can't wait to push one of those buttons and see if the fire curtain really will drop from the ceiling in reception.

Well, we move in in the week beginning 14th February. Someone's idea of a twee joke, do you think, transferring over on Valentine's Day?  As a nice nod to the old place, the new one's address will be 'Luttrell Way' - a spur off the linkroad from Ellicombe to the sea ... and the local holiday camp.  Wonder if anyone's thought about the congestion there will be twice a week in summer when thousands and thousands of people on their holidays will be completely clogging that linkroad on Changeover Days at said camp?