The hospital all the Medical services wanted to keep was Wroughton but the comittee that decided was chaired by a Royal Navy officer (Non Medical) hence Haslar.
When Cambridge Military Hospital closed for the 1st Gulf war Hampshire NHS panicked as it had lost a huge ammount of surplus bed capicity and Frimley park went into permenant bed crisis.
QEMH in woolwich also took a large number of civvies from the surrounding area and CMH was Aldershots hospital.
The MDHU concept was based on Musgrave Park in Belfast but unlike Musgrave Park the wards in the MDHU's were fully integreated into the hospital and counted on the NHS's available beds the treatment of service personell wasn't even mentioned in the inital contract. All the MDHU hospitals are paid up front for beds used by the MoD and there is a minimum comitment I think it was 10,000 bed nights/ year which the Mod were only getting a fraction of and the MDHU hospitals were pocketing the rest supposidly for a slush fund to cover contingences like the military staff being deployed like what happened on Tellic when the MDHU hospitals went screaming to the govt for more money to cover the loss of staff. they wanted £5,000,000 a week.
Now do service men and women get a good service no. Will we ever see independant military hospitals again probably not. An ideal solution would be a site in the centre of the country with air facilities and large storage facilities, areas for building a hospital, accomidation/messes/quarter patch and move all the field hospital units onto it along with the bulk of the nursing and PAMS and post doctors in and out of the NHS. Leave a military/NHS laison team in the main hospitals near garrison areas and orginise a decent PTS system to move patients to and from the hospital. Also allow PAM's to move into and ot of the NHS to gain experience/qualifications.
Had heard a few rumours about a proposed site in the midlands currently an RAF base.
DKH its fine for units in the Yorkshire area to say DKH would be ideal however what about those round Salisbury Plain, Colchester, or the RN dockyards Catterick isn't the easiest place to get to. Even some of the units based in Yorkshire will take their sick and injured to closer hospitals than North Allerton.
Last edited by NURSE; 19th Dec 2007 at 08:38.