The Emergency Department at Whittington Hospital currently cares for more than double the number of patients it was originally designed for.
Whittington Hospital in Archway, North London has today unveiled plans to expand the size of its busy Emergency Department (A&E) unit. The department currently cares for around 110,000 seriously sick or injured adults and children each year, despite the fact that when it was opened in the late 1970s it was designed to treat less than half of that number.
The trust will open a new same day emergency care (SDEC) unit next to the emergency department which will treats people who need urgent care but do not need to stay in hospital overnight.
The team assesses, tests and treats patients on the same day. This often includes blood tests, scans and a review by a senior clinician. Patients go home the same day with a clear plan and follow up. SDEC helps people avoid long waits and reduces pressure on the Emergency Department. It supports faster decisions and safer care.
Selina Douglas, CEO for Whittington Health NHS Trust which runs the hospital said: “We have known for a long time that crowding in our emergency department makes it harder to provide the high quality and dignified care that our patients rightly expect. I want to be clear that this new space won’t give us all of the additional space that we need but it will help to ease crowding in the department whilst we plan for more significant, long-term changes.”
This investment will begin to mitigate the cause of many of the areas of concern that the Care Quality Commission identified in their inspection report published today, following a visit by the commission’s inspectors to the unit late last year.
Sarah Wilding, Chief Nurse and Director of Allied Health Professions at the trust said: “I am pleased that despite the challenges we face in our urgent and emergency care services the CQC recognise our caring staff and found that we continue to provide high-quality care, I want to pay tribute to my many hard-working colleagues for their care every day.
“The main areas of improvement the CQC identified can be traced back to the challenges of an emergency department that is treating more than double the number of patients than it was designed to cope with. We are working with NHS England and local partners to try to secure the funding we need to expand the size of our A&E department, but this will be a major long-term project that will need significant investment.
“In the meantime, we continue to make the improvements the CQC has recommended as quickly as possible.”
