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Urgent Care Centre—building work to start soon

13 August 2010

Building works to create a new Urgent Care Centre (UCC) within the current A&E Department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital are due to start soon.

Building works to create a new Urgent Care Centre (UCC) within the current A&E Department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital are due to start soon.

The Trust, in partnership with our local GPs, has submitted detailed plans to NHS Kensington and Chelsea in June and building work is due to start soon.

This new facility is expected to open its doors to patients in October. It will initially care for adult patients only while children who are brought to the hospital for treatment will continue to be seen in the existing Paediatric Emergency Department. It is expected that services for children in the new UCC will commence 6 months after it opens.

Patients treated in the UCC will benefit from a faster assessment process and the addition of GP-led care to ensure that they receive the right care in the right place.

The new faster assessment process is known as ‘streaming’ and it means that patients will be booked in at reception and then allocated to the appropriate care pathway—either in the A&E Department or in the new Urgent Care Centre – depending on the severity of their injury or illness.

It is our intention for GPs to be based in the department from 10am to 10pm, attending to those patients presenting with primary care problems who currently receive treatment unnecessarily in the A&E Department.

This should mean that staff in the A&E Department can concentrate on providing care and treatment for those patients that really need their help.

Contributors
George Vasilopoulos