Move to PEH could cure all MSG’s ills

A failed planning application may not have been the best way to arrive at the seemingly obvious conclusion that the consultants should move to the PEH campus but, if the result benefits patients and doctors, then it will have been worth it.

Strangely, it took the news that the Medical Specialists had applied to convert a five-storey office block on the outskirts of Town into a new clinic to get the doctors and Health & Social Care to engage on an alternative.

Strange, because MSG in its application acknowledges that a move to the PEH makes sense. ‘The MSG are in agreement that, should space become available in future, that locating the MSG in its entirety onto the PEH site would be ideal.’

Odd, too, because HSC agrees. It says that the project can be done quite quickly and it is a ‘viable, sensible and preferable’ option.

After months of intense negotiations over the new £17.7m. secondary healthcare contract it is puzzling that the subject of where MSG planned to locate its business never came up.

Why is it only now that HSC has worked out that co-locating with MSG enables them to hold one-stop clinics similar to those used for oncology and cardiology?

Their planning submission asserts: ‘HSC believes that not only is it in the best interests of patients but also for clinicians to seek to develop the PEH campus.’

Perhaps the tightness of the contract negotiations – and the rental costs in particular – got in the way of open communications.

The new hurdle – the size of the premises on offer -- seems far from insurmountable. MSG wants 17,000 sq. ft of space, the States has offered them 13,000.

Aside from that, the consultants would get the premises they crave to accommodate their 47 physicians and 95 admin staff and escape from the unwanted embrace of the founder partners who own their current building.

It is time for the two parties to get back around the negotiating table.