THE bill to look after patients discharged from Calderstones Hospital could be around £150 million over the next four years, it has been revealed.

In May, the Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust confirmed the hospital would shut within the next three years.

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The closure of 223 beds at the Whalley-based facility, which is the only NHS hospital in Britain that specialises in learning disabilities, was announced last October.

Care at the hospital was taken over from July 1 by Merseycare Health Trust after the dissolution of the Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

However, a tender document has been released by the government inviting applications to run the ‘transition’ services for high risk patients into the community over the coming years.

The value of the contract is given as between £20 million and £150 million and will start in September this year.

The tender document states “the contract is currently unfulfilled but active, and the buying department is looking for potential suppliers to contact them with bid applications”.

Workers’ representatives at Calderstones called the procurement exercise “premature” and said that it was “ignoring the wishes of patients”.

The documents, states: “The contract is for the provision of supported living services for people with learning disabilities or autism who display behaviour that challenges and requires a placement in the community.”

The document gives the expected number of patients discharged into the community from Calderstones as 35 in the next year, these include five in Blackburn with Darwen, eight in the remainder of East Lancashire and three in Chorley and South Ribble.

For the following three years it is expected another 20 patients per year will be discharged from Calderstones to live in Lancashire communities.

Paul Summers, a Unison representative for Calderstones workers, said: “This is premature as the future of the site has yet to be finalised.

“We are concerned care packages will go simply to the lowest bidder.

“It seems patients themselves aren’t to be consulted on how best they are cared for or patients’ families.

“We are also troubled that this care could go outside the NHS.”

The current average annual cost of looking after a patient with issues such those cared for at Calderstones in the community is around £155,000.

Contracts to care for these patients will be let to care providers for between one and 10 years.

Lancashire County Council are leading the procurement and tenders must be sent in to them by July 26.