First look inside £38 million new A&E for Wolverhampton

The £38 million emergency centre at New Cross Hospital is on track to open in November, and will be the biggest of its kind in the Midlands.

Thirty new nursing staff are being recruited for the facility, which bosses hope will ease the pressure on the hospital's current A&E which has record patient numbers pouring through the door.

With a new, covered ambulance bay and walkway leading to separate emergency entrances for adult and child patients, larger corridors and rooms, and a spacious, natural light-filled A&E waiting room, it is now taking shape.

Chief executive David Loughton said it had been great watching the building take shape over recent months.

He said: "Kier Construction have done a job - naturally it is quite hard when it is the middle of the site to keep everyone going around it, but it is gone well and absolutely is on time."

The current emergency department is 'completely unfit for purpose', Mr Loughton said: "Staff do a fantastic job in pretty awful conditions.

"The present department is working at 40,000 more patients a year than its maximum design capacity, it is absolutely stretched.

"A&E attendances are going up year on year, and have been for some considerable amount of time.

"It will be great for the staff to have a new department, just everything physically is much bigger. In the present department you can't really turn a bed in the corridor."

During the 2014/15 year the emergency department saw record attendances, with a seven per cent increase in attendees from the previous year, which is almost 11,000 additional patients.

While he cannot give the exact date the new emergency centre will open its doors, as there is 'an awful lot of work' and things to check once the building is handed over to the hospital, Mr Loughton expects to be able to announce its opening about a week in advance.

And once the centre is ready to go, the emergency department will have double staff on the clock and more on standby, with a four-hour handover period between the old A&E and the new.

Staff from other departments, such as IT, will also be on site to ensure the handover runs smoothly.

The last patient will be admitted to the current emergency department at 3.59am, with all patients heading to A&E from 4am onwards sent to the new facility.

As there is a four-hour limit on the time patients are waiting, by 8am the old A&E will have seen its final patient and the new facility will have taken over completely. The acute medical unit will make the move three days later.

Jane Mckiernan, group manager for emergency services, said the opening was 'getting ever closer now'.

She said: "We are counting the days down now, it won't be long.

"It has been a big project because we have had to involve a lot of disciplines, it is not just about the clinicians and nurses in A&E but but clinical services across the trust.

"It is a big mission."

If a patient who has had a stroke is taken to the emergency department, for example, they will get the stroke team down to A&E, or if they need orthopaedic advice they will get the orthopaedic surgeons down.

Miss Mckiernan said: "So it has been across the whole of the trust...and in some ways it has helped us because communication has been really important, and it has helped us to re-establish that."

During the day they have 15 nurses on duty at peak times, and a similar number of doctors.

In the new A&E, they will have an additional three per shift.

After touring the new facility, which is a month away from having all of the equipment installed, Miss Mckiernan said: "It is going to be lovely for patients, and also lovely for staff which is really important.

"Often they head into work at 7am and leave at 7pm so they don't see daylight.

"Happy staff make for happy patients."