A three-month report launched last year to review the Island's health care had to go into a second phase and will not be finished until spring this year, it emerged last night.

A Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) spokesperson said the option was always there to extend the Johns Hopkins review and the total cost had risen from $200,000 to $300,000.

The review and any mention of the future of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, however, was not included in the Budget report yesterday. However the hospital did get an eight percent increase its budget this year from $109.3 million to $113.29 million.

This increase, according to a BHB spokesperson, will help with the delivery of services as it can charge providers a more competitive fee.

"We are very pleased that Government is recognising the importance of funding Bermuda health care by means of a fee uplift in line with international trends," the spokesperson said.

"This uplift will increase fees charged by all health care practices and organisation including the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB).

"BHB is a not-for-profit organisation and being able to charge a competitive fee enables us to earn enough to reinvest in the hospital and to modernise.

"BHB can only charge the set fee for an agreed list of services so the fee uplift is extremely important to us. It will help us bring in new equipment, improve our technology, increase nurse staff levels on our wards and improve the hospital environment in the coming year."

Even though the Johns Hopkins report will not be finished until spring this year, the spokesperson yesterday assured the public that the BHB continues to work toward building a new hospital, but that it was a multi-year process.

Last week Health Minister Nelson Bascome said in the House of Assembly there were already major changes taking place.

Mr. Bascome said: "Within our hospital we need some work and I believe that starts with service. We have worked with the hospital's infrastructure and have gone from the top and have started to make changes, right down to the bottom.

"Now we have chiefs of staff in every discipline, where we have individuals focused on their disciplines and on addressing a number of issues of infrastructure.

"Every complaint which comes into my office, I send it immediately to the Chief Medical Officer, and his timeline is one week." Also mentioned in yesterday's Budget were the urgent care clinics, which were promised in the PLP election platform.

The first centre will be built in Southside for an allotted $2.5 million in this year's budget and will provide ambulatory care in a facility dedicated to the provision of unscheduled walk-in care outside of the emergency department.

Design and development for the first centre has already started, but funding for a second urgent care facility in the west of the Island will be included in next year's budget.

Mr. Bascome yesterday promised the first centre would be up and running by April 1, 2009. He said: "We intend to aggressively pursue the establishment of Bermuda's first urgent care centre over the next fiscal year and the first patient will walk through the door not later than April 1, 2009.

"It is important to understand that an urgent care centre provides treatment to patients suffering from non-life-threatening conditions that require quick attention, including bone fracture, pneumonia, flu and minor lacerations.

"An urgent care centre reduces rates of inappropriate Emergency Department utilisation by triaging non-emergency patients to less acute settings."

Mr. Bascome also promised to raise awareness on what the centre does over the next year and though it was not mentioned in the health care budget, which grew nine percent from more than $143 million last year to more than $151 million this year, he said the Ministry would continue to develop legislation and policies for better care.