New £3 million ward for Royal Shrewsbury Hospital to cope with winter

The extra beds will be provided at Shrewsbury – and not Telford's Princess Royal Hospital as previously announced.

NHS Improvement has made £3 million available to Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital Trust (SaTH) to increase capacity.

The money will be used to refurbish a part of the Copthorne building at RSH to house about 30 extra beds.

Last month SaTH chief executive Simon Wright mistakenly announced the extra beds would be at PRH.

Julie Davies, director of performance and delivery at Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), confirmed last night the ward would be at the RSH and will help cope with demand this winter.

She said: "We are positive that we have got as good a view point of demand going into winter as in previous years, notwithstanding any extreme weather."

The move, which comes as a night-time closure of A&E in Telford looms, was questioned by councillors on Shropshire Council's health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee. They raised concerns about staffing.

Ensure

Councillor Heather Kidd said: "How are we going to staff an extra 30 beds when we don't even have enough to staff the hospital as it stands?

"The CCG commissions these services but it seems no one else has the tooth to say it's dangerous. We need to ensure the patients are receiving safe care."

Councillor Roy Aldcroft said the trust is bringing in more and more agency staff to deal with the shortfall, but fears it could lead to mistakes.

"I believe a problem for these agency staff when they are working on specialised wards is that they don't know how to use the systems," he said.

"How are we going to ensure the agency staff are properly inducted into the system and supervised when using it?"

Dr Davies told the meeting that the CCG is satisfied that the trust's staffing levels are under control.

She added: "Ultimately, if we were not happy with the provision of care or the plans, we would habe to go out and find an alternative provider. This is a major complexity, as I'm sure you can imagine.

"But what we have seen from the trust is that their work force plans over the medium to long-term seem quite robust."

It is anticipated an additional 172 beds will be needed to meet peak demand in January next year.

It is believed the new ward will be open by December 24.