Minor refurbishments to boost A&E capacity

Against a backdrop of continuing pressures on Accident and Emergency Departments, Jon Huddy, AIA, NCARB, President and senior A&E designer at international healthcare design consulting firm, Huddy HealthCare Consulting (a speaker on both days at this month’s Healthcare Estates 2016 show), sets out a personal vision of how design teams might re-think configuration of such spaces to add extra capacity. He also examines how cleverly thought-out ‘minor’ refurbishment schemes can help estates teams effectively address the issue, potentially at low cost, and keep their space-hungry clinical counterparts happy into the bargain.

As patient volumes, and operational pressures continue to rise in Accident and Emergency departments across the NHS, so does the need to maximise the capacity of such departments, to increase the amount of patients each is capable of accommodating. The BBC recently reported that there were more than 2,000,000 attendances at A&E units in March 2016; the highest patient volume for any month since the data’s first availability in 2010. The broadcaster also reported 500,000 more patient visits to A&E in the 2015/16 financial year than in the previous year.1 

As well as being subject to this rising patient-volume pressure, the NHS as a whole is facing increasing financial pressures. The King’s Fund, an independent charity group, states that its intent is ‘to improve health and care in England’. Its reports show the 2015/16 aggregate deficit (£1.85 billion [unaudited]) for NHS providers and commissioners is the largest in NHS history –a threefold increase on the previous year.2 Many of the A&E departments facing rising patient volumes are in ageing facilities that need major updates or large building expansions. Even facilities just 15 years’ old could use a major refurbishment and expansion to deliver additional capacity through multiple new ‘exam’ rooms.