Derriford Hospital’s new six floor £247 million emergency care building has reached a significant milestone with the completion of the structural frame.
The building, set to open in spring 2029, will replace the hospital’s current 50-year-old emergency department and care for twice as many patients.
With spacious modern facilities, diagnostic imaging equipment and multiple specialised operating theatres, the new structure is expected to transform urgent and emergency care for patients across Devon and Cornwall.
It will bring together all the services that support same day emergency care in one place.
A topping out ceremony to celebrate the milestone will be held at the site tomorrow. It comes 11 months after work started on the concrete frame. The next stages are to make the building watertight and internal work including electrics followed by a full fit out.
From left to right, Stuart Windsor, Future Hospitals programme director, Dr Anne Hicks, consultant and senior clinical leader, Stephen Ford, operations director at Willmott Dixon and Meg Walker, lead nurse, Future Hospitals Programme. (Image: Alison Stephenson)
The old emergency department will be converted into a new children’s emergency department and will open in autumn 2029.
Stuart Windsor, Future Hospitals Programme director said this would provide a fantastic new facility that would meet all the needs around emergency care, same day care and would add “a huge amount” of new theatre capacity – including four intervention theatres and six hybrid theatres.
Derriford Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) frequently faces overcrowding and operates over capacity due to high patient numbers, forcing some patients to receive care in trolleys in corridors and in ambulances banked up outside.
A Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection report rated ED at the hospital as requiring improvement.
“By doubling the amount of space we will have the capacity to treat people with privacy and dignity,” said Mr Windsor. “People will get a much greater sense of space because all the areas are a lot bigger.
One of the floors inside the new emergency care building at Derriford Hospital(Image: Alison Stephenson)
“The same day emergency care floor will be really important because it brings together all the specialties that are needed to try to ensure that we diagnose and treat people and get them out the same day which is particularly important for our frail and elderly population where coming into hospital is often not the right solution.
“The focus will be very much around trying to get people back out into the community rather than being admitted.
“But the building is only part of this, we need to make sure the workforce and clinical models are right before we move into the building and that is the work we have to do over the next 30 months.”
Government funding was first announced for the project in 2019 but the business case was not approved until 2025.
Dr Anne Hicks, consultant and clinical senior leader, said on the first day she joined the hospital 24 years ago she was told that there would be a new emergency department soon.
“It’s a long soon but we are very pleased we are getting the right product now.”
She said same day emergency care had already started with the new Dartmoor Building on the hospital site, which opened last year and caters for people with minor injuries and illnesses.
The urgent treatment centre, costing £52 million to build, was designed to take the strain off the emergency department. It sees around 130 people a day.
The Dartmoor Building also houses the fracture clinic as well as outpatients and pre opp assessments.
The-new-emergency-care-building-at-Derriford-Hospital-under-construction(Image: Alison Stephenson)
“We are now finessing the clinical model to make sure that when we open the big new emergency care building we are ready for business and going ‘at full tilt’ said the doctor.
She added that welfare areas for staff would improve as they were “really compromised” in the current department.
“The rest areas are away from the shop floor- it’s important that the workforce feel valued so they can put forward their best self when dealing with patients,” she said.
Meg Walker, lead nurse for the Future Hospital Programme at Derriford who has worked in many emergency departments said the building would have a massive impact as conditions staff were currently working in were “suboptimal”.
“When I did my training I never wanted to be looking after patients in ambulances and corridors and that is echoed across my colleagues as well,” she said.
She added that during the summer heatwaves the hospital ED was “unbearable” for patients and staff.
“Having this new build with air conditioning will be absolutely amazing,” she said, adding that there would also be more than one toilet for staff. “We often have to share toilets with patients so to have facilities readily available will make such a difference.”
Stephen Ford, operations director of construction company Willmott Dixon who are in charge of the build, said around 100 men and women a day had been working on the structure which measured a total of 16,500 square metres.
This was the largest healthcare project the company had delivered from over 100 it had been involved in.
He said 80 per cent of the work subcontracted out on the building was being carried out by Plymouth firms to keep the spend in the south west.
Level 6 of the hospital is the ground floor which will be the new emergency department, level 7 is the same day care facility, level 8 and 9 will be theatres and 10 and 11 the plant rooms. The building will be attached to the hospital via a linked bridge.