A mobile ambulance handover unit has been created to help reduce delays at Peterborough City Hospital’s emergency department.

Created and installed by Vanguard Healthcare Solutions, the new facility is stationed at the hospital’s ambulance bay and provides up to eight trolleys for patients awaiting admission to the emergency department.  

The joint project between Vanguard and North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust will increase patient capacity at busy times and enable ambulance staff to be redeployed to responding to 999 calls.

It will be staffed by the trust’s clinical team and is due to be on site for six months.  

It comes as ambulance handover delays and corridor care has been widely reported across the NHS.

To help increase capacity at Peterborough as quickly as possible to alleviate and avoid these issues, the project was planned and the mobile facility delivered within weeks.  

Caroline Walker, chief executive at the Trust, said: “Before the facility was installed, there was concern because we were installing a facility during a very-challenging time and with us still needing to run our emergency department.  

“Bu the installation was completed extremely quickly and Vanguard worked with us to create alternative plans to help us cope with the ambulances arriving at the same time as the installation of the facility.” 

Maxine Lawson, account manager for the South at Vanguard, added: “We have worked closely with the trust on how a mobile unit could help it at various stages of the patient pathway, starting from arrival at the emergency department.

“The additional benefit of releasing ambulances more quickly means potentially more patients can be helped . 

“It will run 24 hours a day and on arrival at the emergency department patients will be triaged and a decision made as to where they can await admission to the department.

“The ambulance handover unit includes patient and staff facilities including toilets, changing rooms, and medical gases to ensure it is both clinically high quality, as well as comfortable.”