Construction on an expanded Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) is expected to get started soon on a site next
to the current department.
That’s according to Executive Chairman of the QEH, Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland. She was speaking yesterday afternoon to the media on the sidelines of the launch of a partnership between Government and the Toronto-based Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) at Ilaro Court to establish the Shaw Centre for Paediatric Excellence.
She said after exploring several options for the build out of that department, including the nearby Enmore Complex as well as within the hospital itself, it was decided that they build next to the department.
“As we speak now we are really building back up the project team. You are going to soon see work starting and we are going to give you a date officially for the groundbreaking of the new A&E. We would have done a lot of the preliminary work already and we decided that we would settle on the original site for expansion, which is next door to the existing A&E and it will call for some reconfiguration of driving and parking,” she told media personnel.
She explained that by building on that site as opposed to expanding the current department, will allow the department to continue to operate and cater to the needs of the public.
“That’s why it was considered the best option, because you can encase the location and do the building within that site and not disrupt the operations and as you move out and start up, you can do some retrofitting of the existing A&E. So all of the other options that we looked at within the facility just were not the best fit,” she stated.
Bynoe-Sutherland said that some $11 million have already been allocated within the budget to execute this project and she said that persons can expect that with the expanded facility will come additional staff to get the job done. Noting that healthcare is a very human resource-intensive area, she said part of the planning for this expansion of the A&E has looked at increasing staff, bed capacity and the services that are delivered by that department.
“It is important to note that building out or strengthening the existing capacity of the A&E is not the only thing that is needed to improve the delivery of accident and emergency services. Very often blockages are encountered within the hospital. When you hear sometimes people are waiting a long time for a bed, it is because they are waiting essentially to get into beds on wards in the hospital and we have been impacted by a number of variables,” she added.
The QEH head explained that such variables include the large population of elderly for care who remain at the hospital long after their acute condition has been addressed, and limited bed capacity at the hospital. As such, she said it is imperative that the hospital strengthen its discharge planning, increase the bed capacity and do a better job in the area of ambulatory care.
“There are a number of procedures that are now increasingly able to be done as a same day procedure – so you can come into the hospital have a same day procedure and then be discharged. So if we can get ambulatory care services more deeply established and instituted into the hospital, it would go a long way towards reducing the number of persons who are required to stay within the hospital. That would help significantly with improving the delivery of care,” she added. (JRT)