COMMUNITY hospitals in north Suffolk are set to benefit from £5million worth of investment after health bosses balanced their books.

Lizzie Parry

COMMUNITY hospitals in north Suffolk are set to benefit from £5million worth of investment after health bosses balanced their books.

Great Yarmouth and Waveney Primary Care Trust (PCT) has successfully paid off its inherited debt of around £10m and has pledged to invest in frontline services.

Beccles Hospital, the Patrick Stead Hospital in Halesworth and Southwold Hospital have all been targeted as part of planned improvements.

The PCT will spend around £340,000 on refurbishments including revamping the outpatients departments at Beccles and Southwold and installing new telephone and nurse call systems at Patrick Stead.

A further £1.145m will be used to increase access to NHS dentistry - particularly in areas where it is more of an issue, such as Southwold, Halesworth and Bungay.

Mike Stonard, chief executive of the PCT, said: “What is particularly gratifying about this extra investment is that it has been influenced by members of the public who told us the sort of services they wanted during our consultation last year.

“This additional spending also fits in with the vision for the NHS that the health minister Lord Darzi set out in July and on which NHS East of England has recently completed its own consultation.

“Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT has taken enormous strides forward since we were set up less than two years ago and we are totally focused on making investments that will help us to achieve our stated aim of local people having 'the fastest-improving health in England'.”

Further schemes will see £167,677 spent on touch-screen technology at all 26 GP practices in the area, to allow patients to check themselves in on arrival and gain greater access to health promotion information.

The PCT will also contribute £1.75m to a state of the art ward to combat infections like MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C-diff) at the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston.

The 22-bed facility will include isolation rooms and will also be used during any outbreak of pandemic flu.