Trolley care in corridors to end as 999 unit gets £7m makeover

Work on the department, which will take a year to complete, will begin in July and will increase capacity by 66 per cent.

It is intended to cut the number of patients being cared for on trolleys in corridors.

The plans are revealed in Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust’s draft quality accounts, which form the basis of the trust’s annual report into patient safety, treatment and feedback.

The report said: “The trust has significant concerns in relation to the environment and patient flow in accident and emergency and the patient flow in the acute assessment unit.

“Patients were being cared for on occasion on trolleys and in corridors, staff were being placed under significant pressure and there were unacceptable levels of privacy and dignity for our patients.

“...We want to reduce the number of our patients being cared for on trolleys, improve our patient’s experiences and patient flow.”

The casualty department is one of the busiest in the country, visited by about 123,000 people a year, and the majority – about 85,000 – are admitted onto a ward as emergencies.

Trust chief executive Phil Morley said more doctors would be employed to provide improved patient assessments, and this could see fewer arrivals to casualty being admitted to a ward.

He said: “We have known for a long time that our accident and emergency department is too small for the 123,000 patients we see each year.

“Changes to services on the Hull Royal Infirmary site, including the relocation of our ophthalmology department to the eye hospital, have enabled us to create additional space within our main tower block building to address this major issue.

“We are currently re-designing the whole emergency treatment process for patients who come to Hull Royal Infirmary to ensure patients receive the most appropriate care for them.

“Many of the patients who come to A&E could be better treated in their own homes and if we can work smarter at identifying these individuals then it will help us to provide better care for the patients who genuinely need to be admitted to our wards.

“The new department will see more specialist doctors in place to help identify this group of patients working alongside the A&E consultants and nursing staff who are already doing an amazing and inspiring job in difficult circumstances. We envisage that this work will take about a year and a half to complete.”

Steps have already been taken to improve the level of privacy and dignity for patients once they are admitted.

The accounts, which cover the trust’s performance over the last financial year, show that nearly one in five (18 per cent) of patients shared a sleeping area with patients of the opposite sex when they were admitted.

A total of 30 per cent of those said they were concerned about it.

This issue was addressed when the trust announced compliance with a national policy to eliminate mixed sex accommodation on March 29.

The requirement is that men and women should not have to walk through the sleeping areas, bathrooms or toilets of the opposite sex to reach their own sleeping, washing or toilet facilities.

The exceptions are in casualty, intensive care, high dependency units where it is in the patient’s best interests, or if it is the patient’s personal choice.

It has also introduced single sex operating and procedure lists where appropriate.

Other improvements planned across both of the sites include robotic dispensing machines and electronic prescribing for chemotherapy, both aimed at reducing the number of “medication errors”.