Ambulance centre opens at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital to get paramedics back on road sooner

The centre provides an additional 17 ambulance offload spaces, as well as extra staff to support with handovers as part of OneWolverhampton Partnership’s plans to ease pressures on the emergency department over winter.

An average of 450 patients per day – 3,150 per week – are currently arriving at the emergency department.

Approximately 100 per day, or 650-700 a week, of those arrive by ambulance and all these will be received into the ambulance receiving centre (ARC), except those that need to be resuscitated.

Gwen Nuttall, chief operating officer at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, said: “Although it is early days for the ARC, it is enabling us to release ambulance crews back onto the road quicker than before.

“The ARC is also a much better facility for patients waiting to be seen rather than the back of an ambulance and it also allows us to start the triage process sooner.”

Michelle Brotherton, assistant chief ambulance officer at West Midlands Ambulance Services, said: “The pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital, rather than responding to the next call.

“We continue to work incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays and are pleased to see this initiative by New Cross Hospital to help us hand over patients quickly so our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives.”