United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has added six additional treatment cubicles to its Emergency Department at Pilgrim Hospital.
The department in Boston, UK was recently visited by the Care Quality Commission and was rated “requires improvement”. This was mostly attributed to the “flow” of patients, something that is being addressed with an ongoing renovation.
The ongoing renovation is a multi-stage, multi-million-pound update to the department. £21.3m funding towards the cost of a new Emergency Department was attributed to this back in 2019. Additional funding to complete the £47.5 million transformation has come from across the Lincolnshire NHS system, with the first phase opening in May this year.
This first phase included a number of new cubicles, but these six are in addition to these.
The cubicles are part of the new rapid assessment, intervention and treatment area designed to care for patients needing urgent care and assessment. They are located close to the ambulance entrance to ensure patients get the urgent care they need as soon as possible.
These patients will then be seen by clinicians, assessed, and any tests carried out to decide their ongoing care.
Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group Chief Executive, Professor Karen Dunderdale, said: “These cubicles will enable us to assess and stabilise some of our sickest patients and identify the onward care they need.”
This significantly impacts the “flow” issues that the department has been having as they are working in half a department until the second phase of renovations are finished.
“These might only be six cubicles, but the difference they will make for our patients and the staff caring for them should not be underestimated, especially as we come into the winter months,” Dunderdale explained.