How we developed our plans
Our clinicians lead this change. They believed we could care for seriously ill or injured patients better by having them see a more senior doctor and by giving them access to specialist doctors. This meant all emergency patients needed to be cared for in one place – how best could we do this?
Our clinicians also saw advantages of taking emergency patients out of our local general hospitals as this would benefit those patients who were in hospital for planned care – where patients know they are coming into hospital and have an appointment. It would mean the care of emergency patients would not delay planned care. For example if a patient comes into hospital and urgently needs a scan, what would happen now is that they would go ahead of all those who were waiting for scheduled scans, delaying their appointments.
While needing to centralise services for the most seriously ill patients we recognised that most patients who use A&E services do not need the care of a specialist so wanted their care to continue to take place at local general hospitals. This would be better for patients because it’s closer to their home. What we wanted to achieve here is care for the majority of patients at their local general hospitals delivered by doctors and nurses.
After considering other options available to us we, working alongside our commissioners (NHS North of Tyne), our governors and our clinical teams, decided the best option was to build a new specialist emergency hospital.