New discharge lounge planned for Northampton General Hospital will help ease pressure

Northampton General Hospital is creating a new discharge lounge to support patients leaving hospital and their families.

The discharge lounge will support up to 16 patients – with four rooms and 12 chairs - and is at the Cliftonville Trust entrance.

It will create a comfortable environment for patients who are ready to leave hospital but who are still waiting for things like medication, discharge documents, or transport.

Hospital Chief Executive Heidi Smoult said: “By creating a Discharge Lounge we will be able to support patients to leave our wards sooner which will help them to get home, or into appropriate supported accommodation, without undue delay.

“It will also provide us with some extra capacity which will in turn will help us to free-up inpatient beds in a timely way for patients waiting for admission to hospital from areas such as our Emergency Department (A&E).”

To create the new Discharge Lounge the hospital will relocate its Emergency Department Minors Areas currently based by the Cliftonville entrance into a modular building.

This new modular building will be side-by-side with the Emergency Department Streaming Hub building installed in January to prevent patients waiting outside at busy times.

Chief Operating Officer, Palmer Winstanley, said: “We currently see up to 500 patients per day in our Emergency Department and aim to discharge about 60-70 patients per day from our inpatient wards who are medically fit to leave hospital.

“Pressure on the department is intense and we hope these new developments will help us to ease that slightly.

“The new building will also help us to provide a smoother experience for patients who need to be streamed into the ED Minors Department or other adjacent urgent care services.

“Patients who need to attend the Emergency Department (A&E) for emergency care will still check in using the same process in the ED Streaming Hub near the main entrance to ED.”

As part of the site changes the car park beneath the Nye Bevan building will now only be accessible to ambulances and emergency service vehicles and will no longer be a public car park.

We will still have accessible spaces available and free (time limited) pick up/ drop off parking spaces available for both ED and Discharge Lounge patients once work is complete.

Enabling works started on the reorganisation in early March and the building work will be completed by the end of the month. Service will be relocated and come online in their new locations later in April.

While works are ongoing, a set of traffic lights have been installed on the entry to the area with priority being given to emergency vehicle traffic arriving to site. Cars will still be able to enter the site via the Cliftonville entrance and will exit through the car park.

We aim to keep disruption to a minimum while these important patient safety works are conducted and thank the public for their understanding as we work to improve the hospital’s services.