PERFORMANCE: North West London Hospitals Trust is reopening beds to cope with the winter pressures it is expecting.

The trust’s board approved the plan to create a new ward on its Northwick Park site, which has consistently missed the four-hour A&E target since the start of 2011-12. Only the stronger performance at the trust’s other A&E at Central Middlesex Hospital in May stopped the trust missing the target in April, May and June.

A Department of Health-mandated emergency care intensive support team said that for a major acute hospital there was a lack of acute assessment beds.

A trust board report said an additional 49 beds were required.

The move comes after the primary care trust cluster’s director of commissioning & performance wrote to the trust: “[There is] near universal agreement that NWLH’s emergency care pathway is under-bedded and there is an urgent need to implement the winter model by no later than 1 November”.

The decision will cost the trust £3.8m; it is negotiating with the cluster about funding.

An urgent care centre outside Northwick Park will also be upgraded from a 12 to 24-hour service under the plan.

The £367m-turnover trust will have to use space currently leased to research company Parexel to make room.

Parexel and Northwick Park hit the headlines in 2006 when a drugs trial went wrong and six patients were left in a critical condition.

The winter plan also includes shifting some elective work from Northwick Park to Central Middlesex.

The report said Stockport Foundation Trust had solved the same problem as North West London in 2009 by adding beds and introducing twice-daily consultant ward rounds.

Topics