Agenda item

Update on The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre

Minutes:

Further to minute 21 (16 September 2019), Dr Liz Bishop, Chief Executive - Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust introduced her report that provided a progress briefing on the development of a new comprehensive cancer centre - expanding The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre services into central Liverpool by 2020. Members were apprised that the new hospital was part of a £162m programme of capital investment to expand and improve cancer care in Cheshire and Merseyside, and that part of a programme that would also see investment in the current cancer treatment sites in Wirral and Aintree, with both sites continuing to provide outpatient cancer treatments.

 

Dr Bishop informed the Adult Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee that Clatterbridge Cancer Centre-Liverpool was scheduled to open in May 2020, part of progress in the Trust’s plans to transform cancer care across Cheshire & Merseyside.

 

Dr Bishop explained that the new specialist cancer hospital in Liverpool - The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre – will be an 11-floor specialist cancer hospital located in the heart of Liverpool, next to The Royal Liverpool University Hospital and The University of Liverpool and would form part of the ‘Knowledge Quarter’ development. The development of the new hospital was progressing to plan and the Trust was making preparations to take control of the building in February 2020 prior to beginning to deliver services to patients from May 2020.

 

Members were apprised that the new hospital will be in addition to the existing Clatterbridge Cancer Centres in Wirral and Aintree and was part of the plan to bring ambulatory cancer care closer to home, alongside co-locating to an acute site for the sickest patients. The new hospital would provide inpatient cancer care for Cheshire & Merseyside as well as ambulatory cancer care for Liverpool. The move date for haemato-oncology in-patients to the new build was yet to be confirmed. Dr Bishop informed that it was estimated that around 90% of patients from Wirral and West Cheshire would continue to attend the Wirral site. Patients would only need to travel to Liverpool for inpatient care i.e. the more complex treatments, or if their treatment was part of an early-stage clinical trial. All outpatient chemotherapy would continue at Wirral, as well as radiotherapy for common cancers.

 

The satellite radiotherapy unit at Aintree would continue, with radiotherapy for common cancers and the specialist stereotactic radiosurgery service for brain tumours. Chemotherapy clinics at Aintree and other locations across Merseyside and Cheshire would also continue, as would out-patient clinics.

 

In response to Member questions, Dr Bishop informed that

staff, who came from all over the region, would be largely given choice of location to work and where not the case, travel plans were in the process of being established – to include car parking and a shuttle bus (also available to patients). Dr Bishop advised that parking arrangements were being made with the Royal – given the staff’s unsocial hours and shift working – she added that excess travel costs to staff would be covered as part of the re-location / transfer.

 

Resolved – That

 

1)  the report be noted; and

 

2)  a follow up report on progress for improvements to the Wirral Clatterbridge Cancer Treatment site be presented to the Adult Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee in June 2020.

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