I attended the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting on Wednesday, 21 October 2020. At that meeting we received a report confirming that the Prime Minister Boris Johnson had agreed that Croydon Health Services was successful in securing funding to upgrade its winter preparations, alongside 116 trusts in the country.
Croydon secured more than £2.5 million, which will be used for: • Reconfiguring ward areas and installing additional equipment, creating safe clinical environment for patients who need to be treated somewhere other than in our emergency department (ED). • Providing a dedicated ‘same day’ mental health facility for patients who have both a physical and mental health need. • Creating a dedicated surgical assessment unit to ensure that the number of medical inpatients doesn’t impact on our ability to deliver same day emergency surgical care. • Implementing a community intravenous (IV) facility, reducing the number of patients who need to attend or be admitted to hospital for antibiotics. • Expanding emergency diagnostic capacity by providing two dedicated emergency rooms, so that timely care can be provided in the Same Day Emergency Care unit (SDEC). • Implementation of the direct booking from NHS 111 to SDEC, ED and its urgent treatment centre (UTC), reducing footfall and waiting time in ED. 7.
This is fantastic news for Croydon residents and of course will go a long way to assisting with the preparation for the impact of Winter on the most vulnerable in our Borough.
Cllr Yvette Hopley
Shadow Cabinet Member for, Adult Social Care and Health
