£34m Stepping Hill Emergency Campus delivers improvements one year after opening

A £34 million transformation of emergency and urgent care at Stepping Hill Hospital is delivering improvements in waiting times, patient flow and ambulance handovers one year after its completion.

Stockport NHS Foundation Trust’s Emergency and Urgent Care Campus brought together a range of services in a new and refurbished 3,900m² facility, designed to improve how patients requiring urgent and emergency treatment are assessed and cared for.

The development includes the hospital’s Emergency Department alongside the Hyper Acute Stroke Unit, Clinical Decision Unit, Medical Same Day Emergency Care service, dedicated mental health assessment facilities and a specialist paediatric emergency area.

More than 300m² of additional clinical space was created through the project, while Stockport NHS Charity provided additional funding to enhance facilities for patients.

One year on, the Trust says the new model is already helping to improve care and reduce pressure on emergency services.

Activity within Medical Same Day Emergency Care has increased, allowing more patients to receive urgent assessment, diagnosis and treatment without needing to be admitted to hospital or placing additional pressure on the Emergency Department.

Average waiting times within the service are now around three hours and have remained consistently below four hours.

Ambulance handovers have also improved, with more than 95% completed within 60 minutes for a sustained period following completion of the campus.

Stockport NHS Foundation Trust says it has also become one of the most improved NHS trusts nationally for performance against the four-hour Emergency Department standard, with the new campus contributing to improvements alongside wider changes to urgent and emergency care.

The investment was designed to address significant increases in demand at Stepping Hill. The hospital’s previous Emergency Department was originally built to accommodate around 50,000 attendances each year but had subsequently been dealing with more than 100,000.

The campus aims to create a more joined-up approach by bringing emergency and urgent services together and directing patients towards the most appropriate care pathway as quickly as possible.

The improvements come as NHS organisations across the country look for ways to reduce pressure on emergency departments, improve patient flow and provide more same-day care without requiring hospital admission.

For Stepping Hill, the first year of the new campus provides an early indication of what investment in both facilities and redesigned care pathways can achieve as demand for urgent and emergency services continues to grow.

Stay informed with the stories shaping health and social care.