Welcome funding committed to cost of critical care upgrade at QMC
Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre has been named amongst a list of NHS facilities in line for a share of over £135m across the Midlands.
A funding boost of almost £12m has been announced for improvements to the QMC that will further enhance developments to the Emergency Department.
The money has been earmarked for an upgrade to the Adult Intensive Care Unit, adding a further eight critical care beds. The Trust has seen a year-on-year increase in critical care bed demand, which can lead to cancelled or delayed operations for patients. It can also impact on A&E waiting times.
The critical care beds will form part of future expansion plans for the new QMC emergency department. These plans were approved by the group working to integrate local health and social care services, the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System (ICS).”
Wendy Saviour, Managing Director of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS said: “This funding is great news for patients in Nottingham and the surrounding county, and will inject momentum into plans to transform the emergency pathway locally.
“The ICS partnership has ambitious plans to develop more integrated health and social care services that will make the very best use of our excellent local facilities and hospitals.
“Today’s announcement represents a significant investment in the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire NHS and our plans for the funding will deliver clear benefits for local patients into the future.”
Tracy Taylor is Chief of Executive of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, the NHS organisation the runs the Queen’s Medical Centre. She said: “We have seen a year-on-year increase in demand on our critical care beds, particularly our emergency workload. We need critical care capacity that meets the anticipated further growth in demand on the service that we are forecasting over the next 5-6 years. This welcome announcement of £11.9m capital monies for Nottingham will enable the development of a business case that will allow us to increase our critical care capacity at QMC (home of the East Midlands Major Trauma Centre) in the years to come.
“We also need an Emergency Department (ED) and urgent care facilities that are the right size and design to meet the increase in demand. The national monies we have been allocated will allow us to progress the next phase of the modernisation and expansion of our urgent and emergency care centre facilities at QMC. This will potentially include enhancing our paediatric ED and resuscitation department to further improve the experience of our patients and staff.”