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Wolverhampton New Cross' new A&E department to cost £8m more than expected

A new Emergency Centre at New Cross Hospital will cost £8million more than first thought - as health bosses brace themselves for yet another six-figure fine.

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Plans for the badly-needed Emergency Centre, which includes a new A&E unit, have been altered to include an Acute Medical Unit (AMU).

The total cost for the centre will now be £38m.

It comes as chiefs face a whopping £180,000 fine as its A&E nightmare continues.

Staff saw around 85 per cent of patients within four hours in December – way short of a national target in one of its worst months on record. The desperately poor performance will result in the huge fine from NHS chiefs.

The new Emergency Centre will open in November and bosses hope it will alleviate the huge A&E problems faced at New Cross in recent years.

Chief executive David Loughton recently said the current A&E situation was the worst he had seen in his 28-year career, but the new Emergency Centre will have an A&E three times the size of the current one.

It will include a walk-in centre, primary care services and now an AMU, which is where most patients go after they have been assessed and treated at A&E.

Chief operating officer Gwen Nuttall said: "This is a perfectly logical move.

"All of our key emergency services will be under one roof.

"We already have an AMU so we're moving it into the second floor and it will be a refurbished, redesigned state-of-the-art facility.

"To some extent it's a relocation, with additional side rooms for patient dignity and privacy."

Ms Nuttall explained how the process would work at the new Emergency Centre.

She said: "Patients will go to the Emergency Department on the ground floor and if they need to be admitted they'll be put in a lift up to the second floor for further assessments.

"This will also reduce corridor transfers - at the moment from A&E to AMU sees patients transferred uphill on corridors."

In theory patients spend up to four hours in A&E before being discharged or admitted.

If they go to AMU for further treatment and assessment they will be there for up to 48 hours before again either being discharged, or sent to a specialist unit elsewhere in the hospital.

Meanwhile the trust that runs the hospital will pick up a huge fine for failing to his national A&E targets in December.

It was the unit's worst month of 2014 in terms of performance, with around 85 per cent of patients seen within four hours.

The national target is 95 per cent and for the rest of the year the New Cross number never dipped below 90 per cent.

That will result in a fine of £143,400, which will be dished out by Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

On some occasions in the past the CCG has waived the fine, in sympathy of the hospital's A&E crises, but it is not known whether this will be the case for December.

A report which goes before the trust board on Monday states: "A&E continues to see increasing numbers with attendances in December 8.79 per cent higher than the same period in 2013. This equates to an additional 871 attendances."

Bosses will also be fined £37,800 for the hospital's poor ambulance handover rate.

Whenever an ambulance takes more than 30 minutes or 60 minutes to get back out onto the road after visiting A&E, the trust is fined either £200 or £1,000 respectively.

In December there were 84 occasions when it took longer than 30 minutes, and 21 occasions when it took over an hour.

Patients continue to regularly be treated on corridors at New Cross with Mr Loughton freely admitting the unit has been 'unfit for purpose'.

A 10-bed extension to A&E was opened around a year ago but made little difference to waiting times of the long backlog of patients in the hospital.

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