Over the past year mobile fleet operator, Vanguard Healthcare, has been providing additional clinical capacity to one the country’s-leading specialist paediatric centres.
A year into the landmark contract, which saw Vanguard’s facilities utilised exclusively for paediatric care for the first time, both parties have acknowledged the success of their partnership.
Birmingham Children’s Hospital is a world-renowned paediatric centre offering expert care and life-changing specialist services to more than 90,000 children every year. Paediatric hospitals, like much of the acute sector, often experience periods of high demand, which can impact the timeliness of elective care for some patients. When the hospital began to experience heighted patient demand the trust engaged Vanguard Healthcare to provide temporary facilities that would allow access to treatment to continue across the board.
The unique combination of facilities provided by Vanguard is often referred to as a ‘visiting hospital’, due to the ability to act as a stand-alone treatment and recovery centre for day-case patients. Birmingham Children’s Hospital elected to integrate the facility with its existing buildings using a bespoke link corridor. With an eight-bed ward unit and a state-of-the-art operating theatre, featuring laminar flow ventilation, the visiting hospital has provided valuable additional day case capacity.
In fact in the single year that the unit has been on site, the trust has been able to offer more than 1,200 young patients safe, timely treatment. The high-tech temporary facility is expected to remain in place, just outside of the hospital’s main entrance, for at least another year – providing unbroken access to care for a similar number of patients.
Commenting on the successful partnership Dr Neil Bugg, clinical service director for surgical care at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, said: “We’ve been very pleased with the mobile unit, which has given our hospital further capacity to treat and care for our children and young people. The facility has proven to be popular with our staff, patients and families.”
Ian Gillespie, Vanguard Healthcare’s chief executive, added: “Birmingham Children’s Hospital is an outstanding organisation with a reputation for delivering first-rate paediatric care. Entering into this partnership it was essential that Vanguard’s facility could offer the trust an environment which met their high clinical standards. The successful care which has been delivered over the last year speaks for itself and we look forward to continuing to support the hospital in the coming year.”