YDH turns 25

Twenty-five years ago this week, more than a thousand people had the chance to look around one of the most eagerly-awaited developments in York's modern history - the city's brand spanking new hospital.

They probably hadn't realised quite what they were letting themselves in for. At 22 acres, the state-of-the-art, £11 million hospital was big - and with the main corridor alone stretching to a quarter of a mile in length, there were more than a few sore feet by the end of that August 19.

Among the many visitors that day was Dorothy Cook. The abiding memory for her - as for many others - was the shocking blue, green and yellow striped carpet in the 80 yard long main reception area.

"The main thing I remember is the carpet - a very bright green carpet - and the long main corridor," Miss Cook, now retired and living in Aldwark, York, says. "I remember thinking that the little consulting rooms looked very small, too. But it seemed clean and modern."

As it should have done. For the hospital had been ten years in the planning and building. Completed for a comparatively modest £11 million, it still incorporated the latest equipment and technology. On that day in August 1976, the hospital hadn't even opened - apart from the nurse education centre, which had been brought into use the previous month. The rest of the hospital opened in stages, between September 1976 and January 1977.

It was the largest, best-equipped hospital York had ever had - 1,600 staff and 812 beds in 30 wards. It effectively replaced nine other hospitals in the city, including the old county and city hospitals, Fulford Hospital, Acomb Hospital and Yearsley Bridge - bringing acute and emergency medical care in York together under one roof for the first time.

The benefits to patients, says Noel Joy, who was commissioning officer for the new hospital at the time it opened, were obvious. "We could not have continued as we were," he says. "All those small hospitals would not have been able to provide the quality of health care expected at the end of the 20th century."

In fact, according to Alan Heaton, then regional works officer for the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority, the new hospital possessed the 'finest facilities in the north of England'.

Dorothy Cook was soon to gain first-hand benefit of these facilities, as less than six months after her initial visit, she was back - this time as a patient.

In January 1977 she was walking through Clifton when a car mounted the pavement and smashed into her.

She was left with multiple fractures to the legs and pelvis, and rushed to an orthopaedic ward at the old county hospital. A week later she was transferred to the new district hospital, along with all the other patients in the ward.

"It was really rather funny," she recalls. "Just before we were moved, someone looked out of the window and saw some furniture vans. So the rumour started going around that we were going to be moved in a furniture van!"

Of course they weren't. Instead, a convoy of ambulances took them to the pristine ward waiting for them at the district hospital. In the county, she had been in a large, multi-bedded ward. In the new district hospital she was in a small, single room attached to the ward - placed there, she says, because staff were worried about infection. "It seemed very luxurious," she recalls. "The whole place seemed cleaner and lighter and it was nice to think you were the first in that bed!"

She had nothing but first-class treatment during her three-month hospital stay, she says. "And it was friendly as well. You can get first-class treatment and you can get a friendly atmosphere. But to get the two together - that's special."

Despite the undoubted benefits to patients, however, even in those early days there were clear signs of problems to come.

No major capital project can be completed without teething problems. Noel Joy recalls that a difficulty with the switchboard, which could not cope with the sheer volume of calls, was soon ironed out. But it rapidly became clear that two problems in particular ran deeper: lack of car parking and lack of space on the hospital site for further development.

The problems were related. Back in 1976, 20 of the 22 acres of the hospital site were taken up with buildings. In an interview with the Evening Press at the time, Mr Heaton made a comment that was to prove prophetic.

People might grumble because there wasn't enough car parking, he said. But they would probably become hysterical if a loved one needed a serious operation and there wasn't an operating theatre available.

Over the years, those dual problems of lack of space and lack of parking have come to haunt hospital managers - especially as the hospital has become more and more out of date.

So bad were the problems that in the 1990s, hospital chiefs even considered selling off the entire site and building a new hospital on the outskirts of York.

That solution was rejected as too expensive. Instead, a major programme of refurbishment was proposed. The result, among other improvements, has been the new £1 million renal unit, the £1 million refurbishment of A&E recently completed, and the £7.9m scheme to revamp the entire first floor. A redesign and modernisation of the hospital's main entrance and reception area is underway.

But with all this money being pumped into an outdated site, where there is little room for redevelopment and not enough parking, wouldn't it have been better to move to a new site after all? And is such a move still on the cards?

Simon Pleydell, the hospital's chief executive, says that for the 'foreseeable future' the hospital will remain where it is.

There is no doubt about the quality of medical staff at the hospital - and the formation of a joint medical school with Hull will ensure York continues to attract the best. The problem is the site itself.

There is a need for 'more elbow room', Mr Pleydell concedes. Many of the problems of lack of space can be resolved by reducing the need for patients to stay in hospital - through increased day-case surgery, for example - and by re-siting some of the non-acute services, such as long and medium-term rehabilitation following stroke, away from the main hospital.

Attempts are also being made to encourage staff to find other ways of coming to work, such as park and ride. But there remains an urgent need for more car parking, for patients, visitors and staff alike. Consultations are continuing with the city council to try to achieve that, Mr Pleydell says.

For the long term, however, he admits, "we need to ask ourselves, where is the future going with all of this? Over the 20-30 year horizon will it continue to be the right vehicle for delivering acute hospital services? We will continue to ask that question."

There must be some doubt whether the YDH will ever reach its 50th anniversary.

Updated: 10:54 Tuesday, August 21, 2001