GOSH is an international centre of excellence in specialist healthcare for children and young people. Each year, it receives more than 268,000 patient visits, including referrals to its specialised services from hospitals across the UK, and an increasing number of overseas patients. GOSH is currently halfway through an ambitious 20-year redevelopment programme to rebuild more than two-thirds of the hospital site. The GOSH tour will include a rare pre-opening visit to the Premier Inn Clinical Building, the second part of the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre. This new clinical building provides two new integrated theatres, cardiac intensive care, a high-dependency unit, a post-anaesthetic care unit, and inpatient wards for the sickest patients.

The new QEII Hospital is among the first of a new generation of NHS local hospitals integrating primary, acute and social care services to serve the local population. It replaces the 1950s QEII Hospital– one of the first purpose-built NHS district hospitals – which had reached end of its useful life. Patient and public engagement has been a significant part of the work that was undertaken to deliver both this £30m facility and the £150m investment to concentrate specialist acute services at the ‘sister’ site, the Lister Hospital, in Stevenage. Procured under an NHS LIFT Public Private Partnership, the contractual arrangements enable services to change as health service provision changes.