Sussex sees surge in specialist services at Southlands Hospital
Morgan Sindall Construction’s Southern Home Counties business has celebrated completion on its development work at Shoreham’s Southlands Hospital for University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (UHSussex).
On September 22, an event was held at the upgraded Shoreham’s Southlands Hospital to celebrate bringing essential services closer to the community it serves.
The event saw speeches by Clinical Director for Community Diagnostic Centre’s in West Sussex Neil Cripps and Jemma Deane, Community Diagnostic Centre Manager, with Head of Radiology Services at UHSussex Caroline Davidson and James Ramsden, Senior Project Manager at Morgan Sindall Construction’s Southern Home Counties business, also in attendance.
Several pieces of specialist equipment have been successfully installed on site at Shoreham’s Southlands Hospital, including one MRI scanner, one CT scanner, two X-ray machines and a chest X-ray machine.
Procured through the Pagabo framework, Morgan Sindall has worked alongside Ward Williams Associates and architects Crowther Associates to refit and reconfigure underutilised areas of the facility, improving the West Sussex hospitals operational efficiency.
The improvement works will increase the capabilities of the hospital and help to provide earlier diagnoses for the local community. It is part of the UK Government’s pledge to launch 40 new community diagnostic centres (CDCs) across England, with a target of providing around 2.8 million scans in their first full year of operation.
Through using Morgan Sindall’s Intelligent Solutions approach, the team innovatively designed and installed removable sections of the RF Cage walls to the MRI suite to enable access for future replacement and improvement strategies. This will offer the Trust flexibility for the long-term future, whilst also minimising any disruption to other essential services.
Morgan Sindall has been committed to creating real value where it is most needed for the communities in which it operates. As part of this project, the team have welcomed a group of T-Level students to engage with the project, providing them with invaluable, first-hand experience in construction.
Guy Hannell, area director for Morgan Sindall Construction in the Southern Home Counties, said:
It has been a pleasure to work with the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust for this vital project at Southlands Hospital. We have further strengthened the collaborative relationship we have developed with the Trust following the successful development at St Richards Hospital.
Being based within West Sussex, our team has first-hand experience of using the facilities and knows the incalculable value of its essential services. The whole Southern Home Counties business is privileged to have delivered these improvement works and understands the important role they will play in improving key health outcomes for the local community, such as enabling earlier diagnoses for a range of priority conditions.”
Neil Cripps, Clinical Director for Community Diagnostic Centre’s in West Sussex, said:
Our Patient First strategy aligns all services working in the Trust to our True North objectives. The patient has to be at the heart of everything we do, and our services must be sustainable.
The Community Diagnostic Centre provides the perfect training environment, which will promote our recruitment and retention of the best people. Having a dedicated, purpose-built unit will ensure we can deliver the best quality service to our patients.
Now we have the centre in operation, we will be working with our primary care colleagues to develop suitable direct access pathways to enable our patients to access the right care at the right time.”
Jemma Deane, Community Diagnostic Centre Operational Manager at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, said:
The centre will be able to deliver diagnostics to over 45,000 patients in the first year, which will support cancer pathways, allowing earlier access away from the acute sites. The pathway development work will aim to speed up the time from referral to a working diagnosis, which will also increase patient reassurance when they can be quickly stepped down from a query cancer pathway.”
ENDS
For more information about this news release please contact Edward Hawkins at Influential on 07938 487897 or email [email protected].