Heartbeat: Investing in SWB and delivering on integrated care

September 9, 2019

Whilst work in Smethwick on our brand new Midland Metropolitan Hospital gets back underway, you might have noticed that building work across the rest of our Trust has stepped up pace. From multi-storey car parks and developments to critical care, extension to neonatal and the building of a brand new GP surgery at Sandwell Hospital, projects have been springing up across the estate to help us deliver on our integrated care pledge.

Following the completion of the new Clinical Research Facility at Sandwell, refurbishment of Critical Care at City and Dartmouth House in Sandwell, We’re now in the midst of a £2m project to extend and refurbish our neonatal unit at City Hospital which will mean that we are able to provide care for more newborns in our high dependency cots as well as beginning work on a £6m project to build a brand new GP surgery and pharmacy on the Sandwell site. Together with the big build projects we’re also continuing investment in maintenance, our outpatient areas at City are getting a facelift as we develop our general clinic space in the BTC to relocate our fracture clinic and plans are in motion to look to co-locate paediatric emergency and assessment care at City.

It’s not all bricks and mortar, colleagues in imaging will also soon be taking delivery of a brand new state of the art CT scanner and MRI machine in the BTC as well as a new CT scanner on the main spine at City Hospital thanks to the Siemens Managed Equipment Service agreement.

And over at Sandwell, colleagues will not be left disappointed with an investment of £6m in building the brand new Carters Green Medical Centre which is due to complete by summer 2020. The new purpose built medical centre will boast over 20 clinical rooms and serve over 15,000 patients.

As you will have guessed, more patients will inevitably equal more parking, something which has for a long time been in short supply at both our acute sites. To ease this, an agreement has now been signed with QParks to develop a new multi-storey car park at Sandwell Hospital and another at City Hospital with a view to open both by 2021.