OFFICES at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) have been turned into wards to help tackle the NHS backlog.
The wards have been refurbished to meet medical standards will see an extra 47 new bed spaces for patients.
Patients and staff will be moved to Ward East 2a will take patients and staff from Bournville Ward, currently based in West Block, with East 2b taking patients and staff from Ward West 2.
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), which runs Solihull Hospital, Heartlands Hospital, Good Hope Hospital and QEHB, said it was the hardest hit of any other NHS organisation in England, disproportionately experiencing 40 per cent more Covid cases than the next most-impacted trust.
It added waiting lists have grown to levels never experienced before after the Trust treated over 23,000 patients with Covid-19.
Chief operating officer, Jonathan Brotherton said: “While our hospitals are still experiencing the extremely challenging effects of the pandemic, these new wards provide both hope and reassurance for the people of Birmingham and Solihull, and our front line clinicians who strive to provide the highest possible standards of care.
“Almost 400 beds are currently occupied by patients with COVID-19 across our hospitals, with 21 in ICU, this has a huge effect on our ability to provide other treatments that we would have normally used this capacity for, however these wards will help accelerate our continued recovery and treat more patients.”
East 2a and East 2b are the first of seven new wards to be opened for the Trust.
Works at Good Hope Hospital to bring on site two new modular wards is proceeding with enabling works beginning in the past three weeks, and detailed plans for two new wards at Heartlands Hospital are well underway.
