Delay to new critical care unit is necessary - HSC president
Patients will not be admitted to the Princess Elizabeth Hospital’s new critical care unit until early next year, after delays to phase one of the hospital’s modernisation programme.
The unit was expected to be completed by the end of autumn, however final elements of the building work have taken longer than anticipated.
But despite the delay, the Health & Social Care Committee is reporting that the work is still expected to fall within budget.
Health & Social Care president Al Brouard said that the delay was a short one, but necessary in order to ensure that the unit was ready for specialist cleaning and staff training ahead of patient admissions.
‘Being ready by the autumn was a self-imposed time limit. We would rather get things right than rush them, and it is not critical that the unit needs to be ready by autumn,’ he said.
‘It’s not something I am worried about, the work has been complex and it’s better for us to take a bit more time to get it done as it needs to be, rather than risk anything.’
He said that once construction work was complete, a programme of work and testing to make sure the building was clinically operational would begin, and a period of staff training would follow.
The training will begin early next year as undertaking it over the Christmas period will not be possible.
As for how the delay might impact phase two of the modernisation programme, which includes replacing the hospital’s main entrance and constructing new wards for women, children and private patients, Deputy Brouard said the cost estimate for that phase had resulted in the hospital modernisation team working with project management consultancy Northmores, which was conducting an ‘extensive’ value engineering exercise.
‘This work has been taking place since early July and work continues,’ he said.
The new state-of-the-art critical care unit has capacity for 12 single-bed rooms, while a new 10-bed post-anaesthetic care unit – an increase of three from the current provision – also forms part of phase one.
The building also has separate entrances for patients and visitors, as well as a number of private meeting and consultation rooms, and increased storage space.
John Eaton, lead nurse for in-patient wards and critical care, said the development would help solve ‘part of the puzzle’ of waiting times and general hospital procedures. ‘These facilities will greatly reduce the chances of operations being postponed or cancelled,’ he said.
‘Being able to accommodate more patients, especially those needing to spend a night in the CCU following a complex operation, can only be beneficial moving forward.’
