The regional health department has awarded FCC Construcción the 53.6-million-euro contract to build the new Hospital de la Línea in Cádiz. The new hospital will be close to 32,000 square metres in area and will provide healthcare for more than 100,000 residents of Cádiz and the surrounding communities.

The job has a 36-month completion period. The new facility will be replacing the current hospital and will be located in the area of Cádiz known as "Ronda Norte".

The building will hold a total of 234 single rooms, nine operating rooms, 48 outpatient consulting rooms, 19 examination rooms and eight emergency consulting rooms. The consulting rooms will be located next to the examination rooms, to prevent patients from having to move any more than strictly necessary.

In addition, the design of the hospital's internal organisation will facilitate what are called "same-day consultations", where a patient who has an appointment for a consultation can see his or her health care professional and receive diagnostic testing and the appropriate treatment proposals all on the same day.

The new hospital is anticipated to start with an annual average of 7,000 operations, 127,000 specialist consultations and 80,000 emergencies.

The emergency area will have eight consulting rooms, two for paediatric emergencies, plus a recovery bay with three stations and an observation and short treatment room with 24 stations, in addition to family and patient waiting areas.

The current hospital's intensive care unit, which can hold eight patients, will be transformed into a multi-purpose area with the capacity for 34 patients. The facility will also have seven operating rooms (one more than it does now), two delivery rooms (at present there is only one) and four labour rooms.The hospitalisation area will be enlarged from 64 rooms and 184 beds to a total of 234 rooms, all singles equipped with private lavatories. Thirty-four of these rooms will be located in the multi-purpose area and will be reserved for surgery outpatients, patients recovering from anaesthesia and intensive care patients.
The other 200 rooms will be for conventional hospitalisation, and they will be located in the areas for adults (124), paediatric medicine (20), newborns (14), obstetrics and gynaecology (36) and mental health (20).

On the equipment side, the new hospital will have electronic services enabling health professionals to contact and consult each other remotely. The diagnostic X-ray area will be strengthened as well, with the incorporation of a nuclear magnetic resonance unit and a new remote control unit for studies of the digestive system. Altogether the hospital will have ten imaging rooms: three for X-rays, two for remote control, two for ultrasound scanning, one for mammograms, one for CAT scans and one for magnetic resonance imaging.

The list of services available at the new hospital will include internal medicine, cardiology, pulmonology, digestive medicine, haematology, nephrology, oncology, paediatrics, mental health, general surgery, traumatology, ophthalmology, ENT, urology, dermatology, obstetrics and gynaecology.

The facility will also be equipped with a medical heliport and general services covering clinical analyses, microbiology, pathological anatomy, preventive medicine, radiology, rehabilitation, the hospital pharmacy and anaesthesia.