New Emergency Department is open for business!

The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust’s new Emergency Department opened on Tuesday, June 3, in the hospital’s £26million treatment centre.

The Garrett Anderson Centre is the biggest development on the hospital site for 30 years and will house emergency care, day surgery, elective care and critical care.

A state-of-the-art Emergency Department, more than twice the size of the current department, will be the first to open its doors.

It includes a children's emergency department with specialist paediatric staff, four treatment rooms and inside and outside play areas.

The main department features nine major treatment rooms, each with brand new, latest technology monitoring equipment and three state-of-the-art resuscitation bays. The building has been built to provide services into the future so there are a further four major treatment rooms and three resuscitation bays ready for use when required. The department is has been fully equipped with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of new equipment.

All assessment rooms are single occupancy for improved patient privacy, as well as being much bigger and brighter.

Patients arriving by ambulance will be taken via the ambulance entrance at the back of the building. This allows rapid access to the resuscitation area and major treatment rooms.

The department also boasts a brand new ambulatory care area accessible from the main entrance to all patients arriving by private transport. This incorporates a fully equipped urgent care/minor injury unit open 24 hours day where patients will be seen promptly by highly trained doctors and nurses with access to full diagnostics including x-ray, ultrasound and pathology.

Consultant David Lewis said: “This is a fantastic new facility which will make a tremendous difference in the way we care for patients.”

Anyone who goes to the Emergency Department after 8am on Tuesday will need to go to the Garrett Anderson Centre. There is a bus stop outside the building and it is next to both long and short-stay public car parks.

The rest of the centre includes a day surgery suite with four theatres and an area dedicated for children, a 40-bed ward for elective care with 20 single rooms, all en suite, and a 22-bed critical care unit with four isolation rooms to help tackle infections. All the departments will move in throughout June.

Mark Madden, Director of Finance and Performance, said: “The new four-storey centre will provide a 21 st century healthcare environment for the benefit of patients in Suffolk".