Julia Lopez MP has welcomed this week’s announcement that Queen’s Hospital will benefit from a new £1.1 million ambulance hub to provide additional urgent and emergency care capacity and allow ambulances to get to patients more quickly.
The ambulance hub will increase efficiency – cutting out unnecessary delays and getting ambulances back on the road faster, ensuring they can reach people as quickly as possible. Julia Lopez MP has already established contact with BHRUT, the trust responsible for Queen’s hospital, to see how this new facility may be brought into service as swiftly as possible.
This investment in our local acute hospital comes within a wider £50 million investment package to improve urgent and emergency care performance and cut waiting lists. NHS London will receive £4.2 million via this funding with three additional discharge lounges being opened at the Royal Free Hospital in Camden, the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and Whittington Hospital in Islington. These will compliment the five lounges already operating across the capital. Full details on the announcement from the Department of Health and Social Care can be found here.
This announcement will help to achieve the targets set out within the Urgent and Emergency Recovery Care Plan published earlier this year by the Government and the NHS. Under the plan frontline capacity will be boosted with 800 new ambulances, including 100 specialist mental health vehicles, and 5,000 more sustainable hospital beds backed by a £1 billion dedicated fund.
In addition to investments in Urgent and Emergency Care, Hornchurch & Upminster and the wider area will soon benefit from the investment of £17 million in the new St. George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub, due to open in March 2024. This purpose-built facility will provide a shared base for primary care, community and mental health services, acute outpatient care, renal dialysis, diagnostics services for cancer, a new frailty hub, social care and local voluntary and community groups. Primary care provision within the hub will support 5,000 extra patients, while the frailty hub is expected to prevent 3,000 hospital admissions each year and diagnostics facilities will provide a further 13,000 MRI and CT scans a year.
In the meantime, primary care provision will be aided by the Government’s delivery of a key manifesto commitment, to recruit 26,000 additional primary care professionals, one year early. Under the recruitment drive 670 additional primary care staff have been recruited within the North East London area, with recruitment set to continue into the future. For more information on local recruitment via this scheme, see Julia’s recent update here.
