This month is a special anniversary for NHS Lanarkshire, as it marks 25 years since the official opening ceremony was performed at University Hospital Hairmyres.
The then First Minister Henry McLeish MSP was the man who cut the ribbon, but the story of building the new hospital began May 1998, when then Scottish Office Minister Sam Galbraith MP cut the first turf, before the Kier Group began construction.
Mr Galbraith mounted a digger to signal the start of the 37 month building period, which saw the demolition of the majority of the old hospital buildings and nurses home. Patients often had to be moved outdoors, to move from ward to ward, in the old hospital.
A former neurosurgeon, Mr Galbraith said: “Medicine has now changed and developed for the better. This is a new era for the people of Lanarkshire who will have access to a much higher level of health care than they do at present.”
David Campbell, chair of Hairmyres and Stonehouse Trust, added: “The hospital will enable our staff to develop the highest quality of care.”
Famously, Eric Blair – the real name of George Orwell – wrote some of his famous novel 1984 whilst recovering from tuberculosis at the original hospital.
By February 2001, work was complete, with an opening date set for 25 March. During the opening period, all inpatients and the accident and emergency units began a three-day transfer into the new hospital, from 22 March.
The Hairmyres opening took place three months ahead of Wishaw General.
Lanarkshire acute Trust Chief Executive Joe Owens said opening the two new hospitals was: “a unique event for Lanarkshire and for the NHS in Scotland. A huge amount of planning and preparation has taken place to ensure smooth transition during the transfer of services.
“The challenge of improvement now and in the future is considerable. The Trust will be providing the most modern acute facilities anywhere in the United Kingdom. We will go on to develop services that will match the new buildings and equipment.”
David Hume, general manager of the hospital, said: “This certainly is an historic event as the existing Hairmyres has a very rich history that has spanned generations.
“This is a fantastic new beginning for Hairmyres and everyone has worked their hardest to make preparations for the move ensuring it is completed efficiently and safely.
“I would just like to thank all of the staff who have coped so well over these past few months. The new hospital will be a monumental achievement for the people of Lanarkshire and every member of staff to be proud of.”
Before the official opening, Associate Hospital Medical Director Dr Barry Vallance and some of his staff toured the hospital. Dr Vallance had worked at Hairmyres for 20 years at that point.
One of the first reactions of nursing staff to the new building was that everything was now under one roof and there was no longer a need to travel by ambulance from unit to unit.
Dr Vallance said: “It’s fabulous. A purpose-built state-of-the-art, fit for purpose hospital.
“The relationship between different departments is focused on the patient. Intensive care, high dependency units, day theatres, are all linked.
“The flexibility of design is excellent. A ward can expand into the next one if needed. Of course it means that for one ward to expand, somewhere else has to contract but the point is that the design gives an ability to meet the needs of services.”
Equipment was of the highest standard and the most up-to-date.
But Dr Vallance pointed out: “We have modern equipment in the old hospital and make good use of this technology. This will be replicated and increased in the new building and bring higher quality to what we currently do.”
Hairmyres was part of the first hospital network in Britain to have PACS (Patient Archiving and Communications System), which allowed records and x-rays to be available on a computer screen wherever and whenever they were needed.
A pneumatic tube system allowed safe and efficient transfer of samples from wards to laboratories, and resulted were relayed back to the ward by computer.
Sadly, Dr Vallance passed away in June 2024, and was posthumously awarded the prestigious William Cullen Prize for his outstanding contributions to patient care.
The first patient to settle into the new Hairmyres was 81-year-old Elizabeth Reynolds, who was impressed with what she saw.
She said: “It is a lovely place – way beyond the building we have left behind. The furnishings look great, everything is so bright and the fantastic staff are obviously happy to be here.”
East Kilbride resident Rose Martin joked: “I am thinking about booking myself in on a five-year contract! If the nurses weren’t walking around in uniform, you would think you were in a holiday home. The difference between this and the old hospital is night and day.”
Scott Ferguson, who had a spell in the old hospital five weeks before the new one opened, was one of the first A&E patients after breaking his arm while playing football. He was also one of the first to take advantage of the PACS system.
He said: “I wasn’t expecting a chance to compare the two, but I have seen first-hand what the differences are. Everything here looks to be an improvement on what it was, right from the way it looks through to the parking facilities. It’s good to see we have a facility like this in East Kilbride.”
Within its first couple of weeks of opening, the hospital was visited by Scotland’s First Minister Henry McLeish MSP, Secretary of State for Scotland Helen Liddell MP, and Health Minister Susan Deacon MSP, as well as East Kilbride’s MP Adam Ingram and MSP Andy Kerr.
Mr McLeish said: “This magnificent new hospital is great news for the people of East Kilbride. It has been designed for the 21st century and around the needs of the patients. This is what rebuilding of the NHS in Scotland is all about.”
Health Minister Susan Deacon had visited the hospital during the early stages of its construction, and she said: “I am delighted to see the new Hairmyres Hospital open to patients. I would certainly like to congratulate all of the staff for making this a reality.
“The changeover has been a monumental task but through team work it has been a success.”
Helen Liddell added: “This is the most stunning hospital I have ever seen – it is one of the best in the world.
“I know Hairmyres of old as my mother was a patient for six years when it was poor in terms of the facilities for both patients and staff, but seeing this change to state-of-the-art facilities is fantastic.”
Mr McLeish returned to the hospital in September 2001, for its official opening ceremony, where he said: “I hope that today’s official opening will be an occasion for genuine pride, and to look forward to decades of high-quality care delivered by staff working on this site.”
