Tomorrow's NUH

Tomorrow's NUH (TNUH) is the name of our programme to redevelop both the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) and the City Hospital, creating improved environments that will enable us to respond to changes in health needs and medical advances, and to continue providing the right care for our local communities long into the future. It is part of the Government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP), which is investing in buildings and equipment across the NHS, to ensure that our healthcare system and staff have the facilities they need for the future.

Currently, we have some duplication of services across our two large hospital sites, and have services which should ideally be co-located, at the moment situated on opposite sides of the City Hospital. Our ageing estate makes it difficult for us to deliver modern healthcare in the way we would like to – many of our buildings were designed at a different time to care for fewer patients with different needs than those of today. In addition, as new treatments and technologies unheard of five or ten years ago are introduced, it is also important that our health and care services change too.

We also want to use our staff and resources in the most efficient ways, and we want to make sure we are creating opportunities within our local community as an employer of choice, while building on our reputation as a world-class teaching and research institution, so we attract new clinical talent to the region.

Through the Tomorrow’s NUH Programme investment, we have the opportunity to help address these issues and want to:-

• Improve the way we manage the care of patients in an emergency by increasing the range of emergency care we provide at the QMC.
• Provide new facilities for women, children and families, bringing these together on a single hospital site (QMC).
• Provide a centre of excellence at the City Hospital for planned (elective) care.
• Develop best-in-class cancer services at both the City Hospital and the QMC sites and in the community.
• Transform outpatient services to provide patients with high quality care at the right time, and in the right place.

Our proposals, in summary:-

Through the TNUH programme we also have the opportunity to review the services currently delivered from Ropewalk House and consider the right location for these in the future.

With our colleagues from the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB, we have carried out continuous public engagement since the beginning of the TNUH programme, to make sure that we have included patients and the public in the planning of our services, in helping to develop our proposals, and in the decisions about how services could operate in the future.

During March 2022, we carried out a four-week programme of public engagement around Tomorrow's NUH (read the engagement report here).  More recently, we engaged with people on services at Ropewalk House, the impact of some services moving from City Hospital to the QMC on residents of Basford, Bestwood and Sherwood, and services for women, children and families (read the engagement report here).

Subject to ICB approval, we will undertake a full public consultation, at a time to be agreed.

In August 2023 we were granted £370,000 from the New Hospital Programme to allow us to further scope and explore plans for key projects – a 1,500 space multi-storey car park and power supply infrastructure – which are needed to prepare our hospital sites ready for the future changes proposed by the TNUH programme. 

An Outline Business Case (OBC) was subsequently produced for the multi-storey car park and approved at the NUH Trust Board in March 2024.

The OBC has now been submitted for national consideration, including NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, and HM Treasury for approval, which may take several months. This process needs to be completed before a Full Business Case can be progressed.

The current timeline would see the multi-storey car park completed in late 2027. This is in line with our current plans for the delivery of our new hospital proposals, which are due to complete after 2030. Once finished, this new car park will greatly improve the quality of parking we have at the QMC. A second multi-storey car park to support the proposed service changes will be considered through a future business case, following the TNUH public consultation.

The multi-storey car park is not the only enabling works we need to do to get ourselves ready for any proposed future changes.

Our other plans include relocating and expanding the day nursery at QMC, as well as replacing some of the digital infrastructure which sits in Curie Court. We will be making progress on the business cases for these projects during 2024.

These developments will help to provide space for the proposed new centre for women, children and families (subject to public consultation) on what is currently Car Park 3 at our QMC site.

In addition, we are working with the National Grid to develop a proposal to ensure that the power supply infrastructure will meet the needs of our hospital sites as they are developed throughout the TNUH programme.