NHS Fife has revealed details of the move into Victoria Hospital’s new £170 million wing next year.
With 539 beds, the wing will have four in-patient wards on the top three of its five floors.
Patients will start moving into the building in Kirkcaldy in January at the earliest, with medical wards the first to fill up.
Three weeks into the move, the wing’s endoscopy services will be up and running, followed by surgical theatres and then cardiology and coronary care.
Week five will be the busiest as accident and emergency services at Queen Margaret Hospital (QMH) in Dunfermline are permanently moved to the new wing.
Although NHS Fife has stressed the dates are not set in stone, the transfer of A&E has been scheduled for midnight on the Tuesday of the fifth week of the move.
Critical care, trauma, theatres, intensive care and the high dependency unit from QMH will move in the same week as A&E, as will the hospital’s admissions unit and surgical ward. Victoria’s infectious diseases ward will also move that week.
Maternity services at Forth Park Hospital in Kirkcaldy are set to wind down in the sixth week. After the children’s ward, maternity ward, special care baby unit, theatres and other units have vacated Forth Park, the site is set to be developed for housing.
NHS Fife projects director Dennis O’Keeffe said “double running” of some services will be required treating patients at two locations simultaneously until the new units are established. Additional equipment, such as extra beds, will have to be borrowed during the move.
The health board’s operational division committee chairman Dave Stewart said the move should be a “catalyst” for tackling smoking outside hospital buildings.
“We are not only here to treat people who are ill but to promote good health,” he said. “At the moment we do have a policy for on-site smoking but we’ve never really tried to enforce it.
“We still have the unedifying spectacle of people standing outside hospitals and smoking. These are normally visitors but sometimes patients have been known to indulge in that exercise.
“And the new building looks particularly vulnerable to this problem because of the lovely canopies at the entrances.”
Mr Stewart hoped NHS Fife’s no-smoking policy could be enforced not just at the new build but at all the health board’s sites.
Operational division chief executive John Wilson said, “We have tried to tackle people who are found smoking outside buildings but we don’t have any sanctions against them. Some staff have tried but they had verbal abuse back when they tried to approach them.”
NHS Fife also aims to tackle parking problems at Victoria Hospital.
Mr O’Keeffe said it was important to ensure that buses serving the hospital were able to reach the building.