The Bolton NHS Foundation Trust says the Department will remain open ‘24 hours a day, 7 days a week’ throughout the building work. In all, £1.74 m in funding will be used to reconfigure the Emergency Department and Urgent Treatment Centre to help meet national targets for the four-hour quality standard and ambulance handovers. The Trust says the project ‘is designed to keep patients moving through the Emergency Department’. Once the work is complete, the hospital will have a new dedicated ambulance handover area, an additional rapid handover bay, and a newly-designed and modern waiting room ‘to support new ways of working to manage rising demand for services’.
Rae Wheatcroft, the Trust’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “We have made a number of changes to our Emergency Department over the years, but we know that our population’s needs, and the way people access care, are changing faster than ever before. This major transformation will allow us to create a modern healthcare environment that is better for both our patients and staff, and help us ensure that our sickest patients get to where they need to be as quickly and safely as possible.”