Estepona’s long-awaited new hospital is set to open in 2019, and when it does it will mean that residents living along the western end of the Costa del Sol can for many consultations avoid having to travel to the Costa del Sol public hospital in Marbella East. Furthermore, the Estepona medical centre will have specialised radiology, surgery, paediatrics and women’s health departments.
The new hospital will occupy a 60,000m2 site, with the building itself covering 14,300m2. Recently, more details have emerged about the planned green zone that will surround the hospital in the town’s Santa María area.
The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, stated that the plans include 7,000m2 devoted to gardens, including a seven-metre high green vertical wall covered in plants. The grounds surrounding the hospital will be planted with native trees and special care has been taken to also provide extra tree shade in the hospital’s car park zone.
The establishment of the hospital has required an investment of €17.7 million, the result of a joint effort shared by Estepona town hall and the Junta de Andalucía. In the New Year, the Junta will start co-ordinating the work of fitting out, decorating and equipping the new Estepona healthcare facility, with the aim of becoming operational at the end of summer 2019. The high-tech equipment needed in a facility of this kind has already been purchased and will be arriving in January, when the installation process will begin.
Estepona’s town hall and the Junta de Andalucía have announced that the new hospital will be able to handle some 85,000 appointments annually, in addition to around 90,000 emergency visits and 4,000 operations. It will also boost employment on the Costa del Sol, with some 150 healthcare professionals needed to fully staff it.
The new facility is based upon the one-stop concept that gives patients access to the most frequently used services within a single location. This has been shown to cut waiting lists and provide better emergency care. As the mayor said, “It is a milestone for Estepona. Furthermore, it will be the biggest infrastructure project of the past few decades…and will represent a significant improvement in the quality of healthcare services.”
