The hospital has been built adjacent to Battlefield Cross and Queen's Park and opposite the old Victoria Infirmary and, as one of the largest hospitals in Scotland, is expected to treat around 400,000 patients each year.
HLM Architects designed the new three-storey building working as part of a consortium led by the Canmore Partnership and Balfour Beatty Construction, which has provided the hospital using the Government's PFI procurement process.
The New Victoria is one of the first hospitals in Scotland to be built specifically for day surgery.
Construction work of the 41,500 square metre (447,000 square feet) building started in November 2006. When it opens to patients on 8 June 2009, it will provide a range of outpatient clinics and diagnostic services together with a wide range of specialities including ENT, gynaecology and urology. It will also deliver chemotherapy and renal dialysis for the first time in the south of the city and provide local access to MRI scans for which patients currently have to travel to the Southern General Hospital.
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Widely regarded as a significant step forward in the modernisation of the NHS in Glasgow and across Scotland, the New Victoria Hospital is to be one of the most modern and best-equipped hospitals in the UK and will be a model for future hospital planning. The development has been at the heart of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's ambitious plans to modernise healthcare facilities across the city.
The design of the new building is based on the concept of a "hospital in the park" in order to create a high-amenity, therapeutic environment for patients and staff and to assist with recovery. Set in a mature landscape, the architecture of the new building is sensitive to its Victorian surroundings and materials have been selected to create a reassuring and non-institutional healthcare environment. Because the hospital basically comprises a wide range of outpatient clinics, these have been configured around a series of linked internal courtyards.
Lorraine Robertson, Regional Director at HLM Architects, said: "By definition, receiving medical treatment can occur at a highly stressful point in people's lives. In designing the new Victoria hospital we were conscious of the need to accommodate a wide range of the latest facilities in one easily accessible location while creating non-institutional surroundings that make the hospital experience as stress free and as comfortable as possible."
(GK/JM)
