Plans for new £58m A&E at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth to be decided

Outline plans to create a modernised A&E at the Cosham site will be considered by city councillors during a meeting.

If approved, the existing multi-storey staff car park at the hospital will be demolished and replaced by a three-level building with blue light vehicle access.

It will also include 216 parking spaces beneath the building and will link to the main hospital.

Chief executive of Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, Penny Emerit, said the new building would help meet demand.

Speaking previously to The News, she said: ‘These exciting plans are the result of really strong collaboration between our clinicians, colleagues, partners and architects.

‘Our existing emergency department is 40 years old and simply wasn’t designed for the number of patients we now see.

‘The new department will give us the capacity we need to meet the needs of our local community and, crucially, enable us to work more efficiently to give all our patients the very best possible care.’

Within the plans adults and children will be treated in single rooms to give more privacy – and allow any with Covid-19 symptoms or any respiratory illness to isolate away from others.

The facility will double the number of adult resuscitation bays from four to eight, with two for children.

A new CT scanner in the department will mean patients needing one will no longer have to leave the unit.

SEE ALSO: Plans for new car park at QA Hospital to be amended

It comes as part of a wider regeneration of the hospital that has seen work already start to build a new 72-bed ward on part of the site of the north car park.

Access to parts of the north car park will be restricted during construction. However, there will still be spaces available for patients and visitors in the multi-storey car park outside the main entrance of the hospital, as well as other parking across the site.

And proposals to build a new four-storey car park next to the ward were approved in March this year.

Councillors will decide on the emergency department at a planning committee meeting on July 21.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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