Plans to expand 'unfit for purpose' A&E at King's Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Almost half of patients at the King’s Lynn hospital’s emergency department currently wait longer than four hours to be seen
Plans to expand the emergency department at west Norfolk’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) are to be drawn up, amid claims the current space has become “simply unfit for purpose”.
Over the next three months, officials will create detailed proposals to increase the size of the department, in order to allow it to treat patients more quickly and cut delays. Funding will then be sought.
Almost half of patients at the King’s Lynn hospital’s emergency department currently wait longer than four hours to be seen, treated, admitted, or discharged.
At a Thursday (April 14) meeting of the QEH’s council of governors, deputy chief executive, Laura Skaife-Knight said: “It the A&E has more than doubly outgrown its footprint and simply is unfit for purpose for the demand we now see day to day.”
She said a business case to expand the emergency department itself would be prepared by July.
It is yet another infrastructure project at the hospital, which is still waiting to learn whether it receive funding for a total rebuild.
The meeting heard questions about how the hospital was working to improve the speed at which patients were dealt with.
Ms Skaife-Knight said: “It is fair to say there are things within our gift that we still absolutely need to improve and do better on,” she said, adding that this included ensuring that no one was admitted unnecessarily, improving discharges before noon and at weekends and making other ward processes more efficient.
Acting chair Graham Ward said the A&E’s bed availability was running at full capacity, a problem made more galling by the fact that nearly 25pc of patients at any one time are medically fit to be discharged.
But issues in other parts of the health system have meant the hospital “can’t get them out of the door, and that stops the flow dramatically”.
Non-executive director Dr Ian Mack later argued: “We could have the most efficient, high-powered ED department in the world, unless the problems are addressed in primary care and community care.”
At the James Paget Hospital last month, some 63.7pc of patients were admitted to, transferred from, or discharged from A&E within four hours. At the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the figure was 66.6pc.
But at the QEH, the figure was only 57.3pc. The national average was 71.6pc.