Expanded Same Day Emergency Care centre to be operational this month

A newly-built expanded Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) centre at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, which will help reduce hospital admissions and improve patient experience, will be operational later this month.

The centre, next to the hospital’s A&E Department, will house a larger Acute Medical Same Day Emergency Care service running seven-days-a-week.

Patients seen in the SDEC will be treated on the same day, reducing the need for a hospital admission which will ease pressure on hospital beds and improve the patient experience and journey.

Government funding for the new SDEC building was secured earlier this year by The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford. It has enabled the current Same Day Emergency Care service to be expanded - with its own dedicated centre housing treatment chairs and trolley bays, accessing diagnostics, as well as improved office space. It means that more patients can be seen each day.

Building work has been completed on the new two-storey medical modular building, and it is expected to be operational from 21 December – several weeks ahead of schedule.

Nigel Lee, Chief Operating Officer at SaTH, said: “The expansion of the same day emergency care service into its own dedicated building is an exciting development which will be of huge benefit to our patients and our acute medicine colleagues.

“Not only will it ease pressure on our A&E and hospital beds at a very challenging time, it will also help ensure that our patients have an improved experience and our clinical colleagues have the right environment in which to carry out their work.”

Dr Aruna Maharaj, Clinical Director for Acute Medicine at SaTH, said: “Acute Medicine is very excited about this enhanced model of care which will help us to provide a more responsive service to our patients. It will ease pressure on our A&E department as the appropriate patients will be pulled from A&E into the SDEC for their treatment and care, where they will be treated as day cases.

“We know that less time spent in hospital helps improve patient experience and reduced length of in-patient stay in hospitals improve patient outcomes.

“The Emergency Centre team have worked incredibly hard over the past few months to prepare for the expansion of the same day service on the RSH site to become comparable with PRH acute medicine SDEC space, and I would like to thank them as we move into a new building, and start this new chapter.”

As part of the expansion of the same day service, the Trust has boosted the medical and nursing acute medicine team, including the recruitment of additional consultants and nursing associates, with further recruitment ongoing.

The RSH was one of 25 hospitals to receive a share of £150 million in funding announced by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock in September this year to expand and upgrade A&Es, and received £6.3 million.

The Trust also secured £2 million in Government funding to convert the former Wrekin MLU at PRH into a Priority Admissions Unit, which is expected to open soon. The unit will help ease pressure on the PRH A&E by moving patients out of the department and into beds/chairs.