PLANS to create a new £17m specialist centre on the site of Chippenham Community Hospital will be considered by the Department of Health next month.

NHS South West has received the Wiltshire Primary Care Trust proposals which would improve the range of services at the town's hospital.

The PCT expects to know if it has won approval for funding for the project by the end of March.

Located in a new building would be an urgent care centre, a care and treatment centre and a clinical assessment centre.

The proposed Urgent Care Centre would provide both telephone and face to face clinical assessment of patients.

It would also be a base for Great Western Ambulance Service emergency care practitioners, as well as nursing staff, who would provide support to local residents.

Co-located with the Out of Hours medical and dental services, there are also plans to have a community pharmacist on site working as part of the team to provide a first point of contact for people with minor illness.

Services that would operate from the site include minor injury services, out of hours Medical and Dental services, a paediatric assessment room and a resuscitation room.

The Care and Treatment Centre would provide out patient services not provided in GP practices, podiatry, speech and language therapy, dietetics and a state of the art physiotherapy unit and gym to compliment stroke and rehabilitation.

There would also be an occupational therapy suite and three additional consulting suites.

The Clinical assessment centre would be a unit where patients are admitted for up to 24 hrs while diagnostic and treatment decisions are made.

Inpatient rehabilitation facilities would allow more patients to be admitted directly to the unit as an alternative to admission to a main hospital.

Dr Paul Jakeman, a GP and medical director for Wiltshire Primary Care Trust said: "This centre would be integrated with the Out Patient unit to ensure an efficient locally based diagnostic service to be established with the emphasis on speed and ease of access.

"This would encourage better and earlier intervention in a range of clinical conditions which would be of great benefit to patients."

The bid would also pay for the development of an extended and improved maternity unit with 14 beds. The stroke unit would also be refurbished and extended to enable the co-location of ten intensive rehabilitation beds which would be jointly managed with existing stroke services.