A KEY Welsh Government decision on the future of plans for a Specialist and Critical Care Centre (SCCC) to treat Gwent’s sickest patients will be delayed until the autumn.

Gwent health bosses hoped the outline business case (OBC) for a £270 million centre, at the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital site near Cwmbran, would be approved in April.

But health minister Mark Drakeford has decided a decision on the OBC will not be made until the future of key services – A&E, neonatal, obstetrics and paediatrics – in hospitals across South Wales is determined.

Options for these services’ future, under a project called the South Wales Programme, were unveiled yesterday.

Two months of consultation will follow, with health boards unlikely to approve final proposals until late October.

The SCCC delay is the latest of a series for a project first mooted ten years ago.

According to a letter to Aneurin Bevan Health Board chief executive Dr Andrew Goodall, from NHS Wales boss David Sissling, “it would not be appropriate to formally consider the OBC in advance of the consultation outcome of the South Wales Programme”.

Yet the SCCC is included in all four options for future provision of the aforementioned services in South Wales, including that considered the ‘best fit’ by those who compiled them.

The SCCC would replace the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall hospitals in providing A&E, neonatal, obstetric and paediatric services, first envisaged in 2003 through the Clinical Futures hospital services modernisation plan.

South Wales Programme options back that vision, though hopes of having the SCCC open by mid-2018 may have to be revised forward.

Aneurin Bevan Health Board medical director Dr Grant Robinson said if the project “hits the ground running”

the delay might not affect the completion date.