New Elective Care Ward Opens
The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust’s new Elective Care ward opened on Saturday, June 14, 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, critical care and elective care.
Both the existing Woodbridge Ward and Sproughton Ward teams will be moving to be based in the new Lavenham Elective Care Ward.
The 40-bed ward has been designed with patient privacy and dignity in mind and will significantly increase the number of single bed rooms available to patients. Twenty of the beds will be in single rooms, with en suite facilities, and the other 20 will be in five four-bed bays with en suites. The spacious rooms will also help the hospital in its battle against infections like MRSA and Clostridium difficile.
Head matron Vicki Decroo, General and Special Surgery, said: “This new ward provides us with the space and modern facilities to really improve patients’ stays. Privacy and dignity will be transformed.”
The ward also has treatment rooms for minor procedures, bigger and better storage areas to de-clutter and much-improved staff facilities including showers, a rest area and a seminar room for studying and training.
Lavenham Ward will open at 8am on Saturday and the move from the existing wards is expected to take most of the day to complete. Relatives are asked to review the information available on the wards regarding move times for patients.
Last week the hospital’s new Emergency Department moved into the Garrett Anderson Centre. It is more than twice the size of the old emergency unit and includes a children’s emergency department. On Tuesday 17 June a 22-bed critical care unit with four isolation rooms to help tackle infections will open. And on June 24 a day surgery suite with four theatres and an area dedicated for children will open.
Chief Executive Andrew Reed, said: “The transfer of services into the Garrett Anderson Centre is enabling the hospital to much improve patient care. “It is a wonderful facility, full of state-of-the-art equipment.”
