Work on the new Urgent and Emergency Care Facility at Derriford will start in 2024 following the Government’s announcement that it is providing over £180 million funding for the scheme.
Enabling work is already under way on the project which will see a four-storey building covering over 180,000 square feet – equivalent to more than two full-size football pitches.
This purpose-built facility will increase Derriford’s ability to see patients more quickly, improve privacy for our patients, provide adequate rest areas for our staff and provide an all-round improved service at the front door for the region’s largest acute hospital and major trauma centre for the south west peninsula.
Future Hospital programme director, Stuart Windsor, said:
“Modernising our estate and our emergency care and theatre provision is hugely important, not only to provide sufficient capacity for the growing population of Plymouth and the wider peninsula, but so we can deliver outstanding integrated care, to unlock better outcomes, to reduce inequalities and to improve lives across Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall.”
He said that the scheme, which will be completed in phases would deliver a much needed paediatric emergency department as well as improved facilities for staff. Work will also start shortly on the construction of a new building to house the hospital’s fracture clinic which will move the service from its current location next to the Emergency Department.
He added that most importantly the new Urgent and Emergency Care Facility would provide space to care effectively and efficiently for the increasing number of patients presenting with urgent and emergency conditions.
The new facility will include:
• Four floors of emergency care facilities
• New same day emergency care facility
• New interventional radiology theatres
• New hybrid surgical theatres
• State-of-the-art diagnostic equipment
• Increased space to care for rising number of patients
• Reduction in waiting times and faster diagnosis.
