Wexham £49 million emergency department almost complete

Wexham Park Hospital’s brand new £49 million emergency department and assessment centre has reached the half-way stage.

Frimly Health NHS Foundation Trust’s construction project means the community will be provided with one of the best emergency departments in the NHS.

The department will take up the whole of the ground floor with separate children’s and minors units as well as 36 individual ‘majors’ rooms and eight rests cubicles.

The floors above will include a 34-bed combined assessment and ambulatory care centre, and short-stay beds. Offices will be built on the fourth-storey at one end.

Building began in April 2017 although enabling ground works started in December 2016.

By Easter 2018 up to 150 people are expected to be working on the project.

The building is on target to be completed within the first few months of 2019.

Andrew Morris, trust chief executive, said: “This building will be a massive rocket launch to providing state of the art facilities to back up our staff who go the extra mile day after day. It will be the best the NHS has to offer for the 115,000 people who come to the emergency department each year.

“The new ambulatory care unit will help us to turn people around on the day, offering assessment, diagnosis, testing and management plan on a daily basis, so appropriate patients don’t need to be admitted overnight – that will help to ease pressure.”

Nick Payne, chief of service for emergency medicine at Frimley Health, added: “I was at Frimley Park Hospital six years ago when we opened the new department there and it was enlightening. We have taken everything we learned there and brought it to this place – it’s going to be something else. The whole emergency department will be fantastic with an outstanding resuscitation area and the new ED is going to be fully supported by a new ambulatory care unit one floor up – all working together.”