CLOSE to £100 million could be spent on the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall Hospital sites from 2020, to adapt them to better fit their new roles after Gwent's Specialist and Critical Care Centre (SCCC) opens.

A range of these hospitals' emergency, critical care, neo-natal, paediatric, and surgical services will be relocated to the SCCC - earmarked for the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital site, near Cwmbran - when it opens in 2019.

But they will still have crucial roles to play in the delivery of healthcare services to people across Gwent, redesignated as Local General Hospitals.

They will retain a surgical role, focusing on routine operations covering a range of specialities, and will continue to have an, albeit reduced, emergency services function, while dealing with minor injuries.

Both the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall will be expected to operate as Local General Hospitals from the day the SCCC opens, and a huge amount of service reorganisation will be required, particularly during the latter stages of the next four years, to prepare them.

That reorganisation will also provide the opportunity to rationalise parts of these sites, and make different and more efficient use of buildings.

Particularly in the case of the Royal Gwent, reorganisation could also be geared towards making the site less cramped.

It may also have to host a range of services currently provided at the neighbouring St Woolos Hospital.

The latter will close either partially or completely, based on what the final decisions about the Royal Gwent's future role will be, and what money will be available to fund service reorganisation.

Any significant developments on either the Royal Gwent or the Nevill Hall sites will not be undertaken until after the SCCC is completed and opened, so from 2020 at the earliest.

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board will be required to develop detailed business cases for any post-SCCC developments at these hospitals, and will need to persuade the Welsh Government of the necessity for their funding.

Work on those is expected to begin next year, though it unlikely that completed proposals would be sent to the Welsh Government for consideration before early 2018.

Health board members have been told that the current estimate is that £94m could be spent on the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall, over at least five years from 2020.