Yet more building work

Our Emergency Department is increasingly fragmented.  What started as a department designed for about 60-70 thousand has had to expand to take over 120,000 per year.  But the only way to do that has been to open satellite areas - minor injuries and UCC across the car park, CHED (children's ED) and OPED (old persons ED) across a corridor and in what was a ward, and now this.

They're digging up the far end of the ambulance bay to put in a "modular building" (I quote one of my colleagues "It doesn't matter how many times you call it a modular building, it's still a portacabin") which will expand the department by 8 bays.  BUT those eight bays will have be staffed as yet another separate area.  It's a temporary fix - the eventual intention is to move reception towards the newly created doors and the new corridor (which incidentally is still not open), and create a "Rapid Assessment" area, also with about 8 bays, in what is currently the reception and waiting room area.  But there was no way we would get that before the winter, so this is intended to help us cope with "winter pressures".

There's a similar modular build going on at the other end of the hospital, where they're creating a Discharge Lounge to try to improve the outflow from the hospital and hence from ED.