A massive package of investment to improve healthcare in Bradford has been unveiled by health chiefs.

A total of £6 million is being spent by Bradford Community Health NHS Trust on a range of new facilities across the city as part of efforts to bring care closer to patients.

Among key projects is a new £400,000 centre for minor surgery nearing completion at Cooper Lane, Clayton Heights, which will enable people to be treated more quickly and nearer home instead of waiting for a hospital appointment.

Work is also under way to create an 18-bed community hospital at Leeds Road Hospital, which will provide rehabilitative care to older people recovering from illness and injury along the lines of a hugely successful development at Shipley Hospital.

Other plans include major improvements to the health centre at Barkerend, a new building at Daisy Bank for people with long-term mental illness, a new 60-place day centre for people with learning disabilities and a multi-million-pound one-stop shop in Horton Park Road involving GPs, other health services, Bradford Council and the Benefits Agency.

Andrew Gunnee, acting director of health facilities at the trust, said the investment would provide facilities fit for the millennium for patients in Bradford.

The investment came on top of work of more than £2 million to create single-sex wards at Lynfield Mount Hospital.

The new £500,000 unit at Leeds Road would offer short-term convalescent care and specialist medical attention to patients discharged from hospital before they returned home as they recovered from problems including strokes and hip replacements.

"It's based on the very successful model we have developed at Shipley which is very popular with patients and has also been visited by Frank Dobson who thought it was wonderful," he said.

"We're hoping to extend this to the new facility at Cooper Lane and to other sites around the city."

GP Dr Barbara Hakin, chairman of the Bradford South West primary care group, which will mainly use the Cooper Lane centre in the grounds of the former Westwood Hospital, said the innovative venture would be a major step forward in providing local care for patients.

Minor operations would be carried out including removal of lumps, bumps and moles, cataracts, and a range of diagnostic procedures all provided on an outpatient basis while the opportunity to extend services further was also being considered.

An extra £21m shot in the arm

More details have emerged about an extra £21million for health services across the Bradford district next year.

The cash injection announced by ministers is an increase of 4.6 per cent in real terms and is the biggest increase in Yorkshire and the North East.

A total of £312 million will be available to spend on health services in Bradford and Airedale in 1999-2000 compared to £291 million this year, an increase in cash terms of 7.25 per cent.

A total of £8.6 million in growth money has been earmarked mainly for new spending on services once pressures on existing services have been taken into account.

An additional £5 million will go on modernisation of services under a ten-year action plan by the Government which will focus on improving primary care services, reducing waiting lists, drug advisory services and information technology.

A further £1.1 million will be spent services in inner city areas as part of Bradford's Health Action Zone.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.