Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Independent Review - report recommendations: Scottish Government response

Scottish Government's Response to the QEUH Independent Review Report Recommendations

The Independent Review of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), co-chaired by Dr Andrew Fraser and Dr Brian Montgomery, completed its work with the publication of its report on 15 June this year. The full report can be viewed at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Review: Review Report.

The Review report is comprehensive, detailed and forward-looking The Review made a number of recommendations based on its findings and conclusions - some of ambitious in their nature, often focusing on lessons learned that seek to provide assurance and confidence in respect of future major capital projects. To that regard, the Scottish Government welcomes the report and accepts its recommendations. This is the Scottish Government's response to the recommendations.

As some of the recommendations are wide-ranging, they will require further detailed consideration by the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland before we can fully implement them. There are also a number of policy developments and initiatives which have already been taken or are underway which will assist in meeting the Review's recommendations. The most important of these is the development of the National Centre for Reducing Risk in the Healthcare Built Environment. In the Programme for Government 2019-20, we made the following commitment,

'to ensure patient safety we will create a new national body to strengthen infection prevention and control, including in the built environment. The body will have oversight for the design, construction and maintenance of major infrastructure developments within the NHS and also play a crucial policy and guidance role regarding incidents and outbreaks across health and social care'.

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to support the creation of this new National Centre. Its scope will be to cover the full lifecycle of a build, from strategic assessment through to building operations and ongoing maintenance to decommissioning. It will consider all types of risk as it relates to the built environment.

There have been other relevant developments in the period since the planning and design stages of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital concluded. These include:

• the introduction in 2010 of the NHSScotland Design Assessment Process (NDAP);^[1]
• the requirement, from July 2015, for Health Boards to use the Healthcare Associated Infection System for Controlling Risk in the Healthcare Built Environment (HAI-SCRIBE);^[2] and
• the requirement for all projects with a value greater than £2 million to use the Building Information Modelling Grading Tool.^[3]

The Review provides recommendations for further improvements to be made to the processes of planning and delivering new healthcare facilities and the Scottish Government's response to each of the recommendations is set out below.

The Scottish Government's response to the Independent Review will complement the work of the QEUH Oversight Board and provide a useful source of information for the Public Inquiry in the construction of the QEUH, the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Edinburgh.