It is an exciting time for Ashford hospital which is becoming more prominent in the provision of the Trust’s outpatient, diagnostic and elective services. This month we have welcomed our first inpatients to the Eliot Ward, our new ring-fenced elective inpatient surgical ward at Ashford. When further works are finished, this ward will be complete with a four bedded Enhanced Care Unit (ECU) which will open in the summer. These facilities will enable us to undertake a wide range of elective general surgery, urology and gynaecology at Ashford hospital.
To support Ashford hospital in undertaking more elective surgery, a brand new theatre has been built in the main theatre complex and two further modular theatres have been located to the rear of the main building. Two further theatres have been extensively refurbished. Eliot ward joins Dickens, our existing inpatient orthopaedic ward at Ashford and Wordsworth and Chaucer wards which provide inpatient Senior Adult Medical services (SAMs). The result of these developments means that we now have ten elective theatres running at Ashford.
Moving much of our elective surgery into new facilities at Ashford will help to ensure that patients operations are not cancelled during times of increased pressure, and that we are able to undertake elective work throughout the whole year. Similarly on the St. Peter’s site, this means that more of our adult beds can be dedicated to supporting urgent care services. Keeping elective patients who are screened negative for Covid on a dedicated elective site at Ashford gives us much greater ability to protect these patients.
Since last summer, when the first Covid peak ended, much of our face to face outpatient clinics have been located at Ashford.
There has been significant building work at Ashford to help with this. The Appointment Centre has moved into new accommodation in the former medical records area, which has enabled us to create dedicated Pre-Operative Assessment and outpatient’s phlebotomy space.
The Haematology Day Unit has also moved to Ashford, currently within the Infusion Unit. Paediatric outpatients has been extended into space previous non-clinical space to facilitate a greater proportion of paediatric outpatient activity to also be undertaken at Ashford Hospital.
Similarly in relation to diagnostics, the proportion of CT and ultrasound scans undertaken at Ashford have also significantly increased over the last year as we have focused their delivery at Ashford, which has been aided by a new onsite additional CT scanner, installed last August.
This is an exciting time for Ashford Hospital, and the changes we have made are vital for the ongoing, safe delivery of our services. It is great to see Ashford Hospital once again playing such a prominent role to the local population and support Trust services overall.