Ipswich Hospital to open new emergency department Saturday

The improvement is a part of £52million redevelopment works at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), which runs Ipswich Hospital.

A portion of this money was allocated to making a new urgent treatment centre (UTC) and emergency department (ED), in a bid to reduce wait times.

The trust has now announced that from Saturday these departments will be open.

Mike Meers told the board about the opening of the new centre. (Image: ESNEFT)

On Thursday, ESNEFT's Director of Digital and Logistics Mike Meers told the trust's board meeting: "On Saturday at 8am we are planning to open our new Urgent and Emergency Care Centre, on the Ipswich site.

"It will offer a new rapid assessment treatment area where we can offload our ambulances into and look at some of our same-day emergency care."

He added that in July Ipswich Hospital had seen a rise in the number of people waiting for over 12 hours at the emergency department, before receiving treatment. 

Additionally, ESNEFT had seen its highest A&E wait times in five years in the past winter. 

The director hopes that these new sites will help reduce the load on the current emergency department and will offer patients a faster route to receive treatment, especially during the winter. 

Patients who come to the hospital will be received by members of Suffolk GP Collective and hospital staff who will inform the patient whether to go to the UTC or the ED.

The new centre will have one entry point after which GPs will inform patients where they should go. (Image: Archant)

The UTC will be based in a new two-storey building next to the Garrett Anderson building at the Heath Road site. 

It will offer treatment for a range of urgent but not life-threatening conditions.

The new facility will cater for an estimated 50,000 patients who arrive at A&E each year with conditions that could be safely managed elsewhere.

The aim of this is to free up the emergency department to focus on more serious incidents.

ESNEFT approved this centre in 2019. (Image: Archant)

ESNEFT announced the new centre in 2019 and said it would have a single front door for all walk-in urgent and emergency patients, making sure they are assigned to the right teams.

The UTC will also have a new CT scanner, which is part of a separate £3.2m investment in diagnostic technology which would also include an MRI scanner. 

This development will also pave the way for a new musculoskeletal department, bringing together rheumatology, spinal services and trauma and orthopaedics under one roof.