COLCHESTER General Hospital’s busy A&E department has undergone a £1 million upgrade in time for winter.

Work is underway thanks to funding from the Department of Health, which has been allocated to ease pressure on emergency departments.

The funding will be used by hospitals to meet the 95 per cent target of admitting, transferring, or discharging patients within four hours.

The works are planned to be completed next month.

Nick Hulme, chief executive of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, had said it would be a “welcome investment”.

Colchester MP Will Quince had been campaigning for improved services and was pleased with the progress.

He said: “This will improve the flow massively, every time I visit our hospital it’s improving.

“They are taking away portable buildings and are building a new structure, it’s quite exciting.”

The hospital, along with the neighbouring primary care centre, is also accommodating the last of the services from Essex County Hospital.

In March, the hospital trust reached an agreement with Essex County Council to work together on the future redevelopment of the hospital site in Lexden Road.

The move was first announced in 2014 and the hospital site went on the market months later.

In July 2015, the trust invested £1. 1million to help transfer services. It was spent on extending the main outpatients department at the Turner Road hospital in preparation for the dermatology and plastic surgery specialties being moved.

Services still to be transferred include:

  •  Ophthalmology services will all move into the first floor of the Primary Care Centre on Turner Road by next summer;
  • Ear, nose and throat services will move to the second floor of the Primary Care Centre on Turner Road by next summer;
  •  Audiology services will also move to the second floor of the Primary Care Centre on Turner Road early next year;
  • Breast services will move to the Gainsborough Wing at Colchester General Hospital in December;
  •  Nuclear medicine will relocate to a new multi-modality diagnostic imaging unit on the Colchester General Hospital site, being developed in partnership with Alliance Medical. It is expected to be operational early next year.
  • Appropriate accommodation is still being sought for radiation protection on the Colchester General Hospital site.
  •  The radiology facility at the Primary Care Centre will be used to provide the Essex County Hospital radiology service by next summer.
  •  A new base is being sought for the wheelchair service. The hospital reconsidered its relocation to 214 Turner Road due to a change of pathology arrangements.

Gazette:

DISABLED patients were left without parking spaces due to construction work.

A number of disabled bays at Colchester General Hospital are out of use while the A&E department is upgraded.

However, patients said they were not informed about it and found themselves with nowhere to park.

Alisa Neale went with her husband, Will, for a check up on her heart monitor.

Her husband said they had found three disabled bays at the front of the hospital - two were occupied and one was taken up by a construction vehicle.

He said: “We pulled up and asked if there was any chance of them moving and they said the bays weren’t in use.

“They weren’t marked up, I was stunned but it appears they were genuinely supposed to be out of use.

“We would have expected them to be cordoned off.

“The hospital dealt with it in the best way they could, the only shortcoming is they should have been marked as unavailable.”

The hospital apologised to anyone adversely affected by the change of use of the disabled bays during the construction.

A spokesman said: “We would like to reassure readers we have

not reduced the number of disabled parking spaces.

“We have 91 disabled visitor parking spaces across the site, with some immediately outside each main wing entrance.”