A NEW hospital for patients across Caer-philly county borough will cost £50-100 million - and might have to paid for with private money, health bosses say.

The project will transform hospital and community health services for a population of 170,000 and redraw the area's NHS map - and people should get the chance to air their views on it next spring.

Existing hospitals such as Caerphilly District Miners and Ystrad Mynach are likely to close.

Gwent Healthcare Trust and Caerphilly Local Health Board will begin talks with the county borough council next month over potential locations for the new hospital. A site of around 20 acres is required.

Two years of preparatory work have gone into the project so far, mainly concerned with what sort of services can be provided at a new facility. Six broad subject areas have been studied: Emergencies; elective or planned services; mental health; community services; women's services; children's services.

Though the population of Caerphilly is not big enough to support the provision of full accident and emergency facilities and other hospital services, one of the project's guiding principles is to bring more services to Caerphilly to enable more patients who live in the county borough to have their treatment or outpatient clinics there.

Currently, three-quarters of residents needing surgery must have it outside of Caerphilly, and many patients have to travel to Newport, Cardiff or further afield to attend diagnostic or other clinics.

"We are trying to put as many services into the locality as we possibly can," said trust chief executive Martin Turner. He added that support from the Private Finance Initiative is likely to be needed for a project of this size, and that it could be 2007 before building work starts.

A strategic outline context (SOC) for the new hospital has already been approved by the Assembly. This means that the case for modernising hospital services in Caerphilly has been successfully argued and it is up to Gwent health chiefs to come up with a plan.

Caerphilly LHB chief executive Judith Paget said an outline business case for a new hospital and community services will be ready in the spring, when the people of Caerphilly will be consulted on the issue. "This is about better access to diagnostic services, a wider range of clinics, better access to out-of-hours services, and issues such as parking and public transport links," she said.