Monklands Hospital has greatly exceeded its design life.

Tens of millions of pounds of upgrading would be necessary in order to bring all areas of accommodation and services up to 21st century standards.

Andrea Fyfe, Monklands director of hospital services, said: “We have continued to invest in Monklands Hospital to ensure that it can meet the ever increasing levels of demand for specialist acute clinical care and provide the highest standards of treatment and care possible.

“This investment has been in addition to more than £35m spent over the last six years, which has been necessary to safely maintain the hospital which was designed in the late 1960s.

“Despite this on-going investment, there are parts of Monklands Hospital that we will never be able to bring up to the standards required and this will be an important consideration as we develop the initial agreement.”

In the short term the plan for the Monklands site is to enhance the existing emergency department and create improved facilities for day surgery and a same-day admissions unit.

Plans are being prepared to create a single centre of excellence for the gastrointestinal bleeding service.

Cancer services will also be consolidated in a centre of excellence at Monklands. While cancer care will continue to be provided at Hairmyres, Wishaw, the Beatson Cancer Centre and elsewhere, the planning assumption will be that where cancer services are developed in the future, any expanded capacity would be co-located with the existing cancer services at Monklands.