Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, March 2011
Location within West Midlands
Geography
Location Edgbaston, Birmingham, England
Organisation
Care system NHS England
Affiliated university University of Birmingham
Services
Emergency department Yes - Major Trauma Centre
Beds 1,213
History
Founded 2010 (2010)
Links
Website www.uhb.nhs.uk
Lists Hospitals in England

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is an NHS and military hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, situated very close to the University of Birmingham. The hospital, which cost £545 million to construct, opened in June 2010, replacing the previous Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital. The Trust employs more than 6,900 staff and provides adult services to more than half a million patients every year.

It is named after Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was queen consort and wife of King George VI from 1936 until his death in 1952.

The hospital provides a whole range of services including secondary services for its local population and regional and national services for the people of the West Midlands and beyond. The hospital has the largest solid organ transplantation programme in Europe. It has the largest renal transplant programme in the United Kingdom[1] and it is a national specialist centre for liver, heart and lung transplantation, as well as cancer studies. The hospital has the largest single-floor critical care unit in the world, with 100 beds, and is the home of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine for military personnel injured in conflict zones. It is also a regional centre for trauma and burns. The hospital is served by University station which is a five-minute walk away.

With over 1,000 beds, QEHB is one of the largest single-site NHS hospitals in the United Kingdom.

Origins of the hospital and the medical school

A variety of charitable hospitals opened in Birmingham between 1817, when the Orthopaedic Hospital opened, and 1881, when the Skin Hospital served its first patients. One of these, Queens Hospital, established in 1840 by a young local surgeon William Sands Cox, was predominantly for clinical instruction for the medical students of Birmingham. In 1884 these institutions, including Cox's medical school, united as part of Mason College, which later became the University of Birmingham.[2]

The old Queen Elizabeth Hospital Hospital, Birmingham

The original Queen Elizabeth Hospital was an NHS hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham situated very close to the University of Birmingham. The building ultimately cost £1,029,057, which was £129,406 less than the money raised by donations.[3]

The new hospital

The new hospital to the left, and the old hospital to the right

Introduction

The new hospital has been built adjacent to the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital site. It was built to replace the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital, although it has incorporated some of the newer parts of the current Queen Elizabeth Hospital. It has been named the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, rather than the originally planned name of Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as the Ministry of Justice ruled that no word can precede a Royal Title.[4][5]

Services from Selly Oak hospital moved in during the week beginning 16 June 2010, and services from the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital finished moving in November 2011. For the Trust this allows simplification of operation due to two hospitals being relocated to one single site, which has the same capacity as the two previous hospitals combined.[6]

The hospital is now the new home of the 'Royal Centre for Defence Medicine', which cares for injured service men and women from conflict zones, as well as training Army, Navy and Air Force medical staff.[7]

Planning and construction

The new hospital cost a total of £545 million and is part of a £1 billion urban regeneration plan for Bournbrook and Selly Oak which includes the construction of a £350 million retail development and the construction of the Selly Oak bypass. Plans for the new hospital were unveiled in 1998[8] and were approved by Birmingham City Council in October 2004[9] after the design was unveiled earlier that year.[10] It is the first acute hospital to be built in Birmingham since 1937.[11]

New hospital whilst under construction

The new building is part of a Private Finance Initiative with Consort Healthcare Ltd. There were problems with the scheme when plans for Consort to sign the deal fell through in March 2005. A deal was signed in early 2006.[12]

The hospital was designed by BDP Architects and construction, which was undertaken by Balfour Beatty,[12] began in June 2006. Five Liebherr 280 EC tower cranes supplied by Balfour Beatty Civil & Construction Plant Services (BBCCPS) were used during construction. Three of the cranes were among the tallest free-standing structures in the UK. One of the cranes was at its maximum free-standing height, 90.2 m (295.9 ft) under the hook and could lift 12 t at 27.9 m (91.5 ft) or 4.9 t at 60 m (197 ft). The other two cranes stood at 79.5 m (260.8 ft).[13]

The first part to be completed was the £12 million multi-storey car park. A further £30 million was spent on preparing the site for construction. The finished complex comprises three 63-metre-tall towers, each 9 stories tall.[14] A sky-bridge leads from one of the towers to the retained estate containing the departments of oncology, the pharmacy and the Wellcome Research Centre.[15] As well as providing patient care, the hospital includes an education centre and retail outlets. The main atrium has a glass roof.[16]

Facilities

  • 1,215 patient beds
  • 30 operating theatres (23 inpatient, 7-day case)
  • 100 critical care beds – largest single-floor unit in the world[17]
  • Six MRI scanners, five CT scanners, four gamma camera/SPECT-CT systems, eight ultrasound rooms, five fluoroscopy rooms and five interventional radiology suites[18]
  • 44% of beds in single rooms
  • No room has more than four beds
  • Home to 36-bed trauma ward for both civilian patients and military personnel injured whilst on deployment
  • 3,800 car parking spaces
  • New home of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM)
  • A multi-faith centre providing chaplaincy and prayer facilities for religions including Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish faiths.

Notable patients

Those reported to have been treated there include:

Notable incidents

In December 2013, the hospital suspended a surgeon over allegations he branded his initials onto a patient's liver.[22] In the same month, a nurse at the hospital was suspended from the medical register when a panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council proved more than 70 charges of incompetency.[23]

See also

References

  1. "About us". Uhb.nhs.uk. Retrieved 2018-04-01.
  2. "Look: 30 nostalgic images take you back down the corridors of Birmingham's old hospitals". Birmingham Live. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  3. "Clocking Out" display boards at Open Day, QE Hospital 6 November 2010 (based on information provided to the Histories Project by Carl Chinn, the Your Lives project and others)
  4. "Birmingham's new hospital named". University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. 25 March 2009. Archived from the original on 11 March 2010. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  5. "Row over name of new Birmingham super hospital". Birmingham Mail. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
  6. New Hospital Benefits
  7. Military Care at new Birmingham Hospital
  8. 'Long, winding road to new city superhospital', Birmingham Post, 30 January 2006 (Accessed 6 October 2007)
  9. Bullring-sized hospital gets go ahead – icBirmingham, 22 October 2004 (Accessed 6 October 2007)
  10. Unveiled: Brum's new superhospital – icBirmingham, 22 January 2004 (Accessed 6 October 2007)
  11. First patients at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital
  12. 1 2 'PFI fears could scupper hospital', Birmingham Post, 30 January 2006 (Accessed 6 October 2007)
  13. "Balfour Beatty buys Liebherrs". Cranes Today. 9 February 2007. Retrieved 26 April 2008.
  14. Skyscrapernews: Birmingham Super Hospital Tower 1 2 3
  15. Skyscrapernews: Annotated image
  16. Skyscrapernews: Main entrance image
  17. "The future of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital". Uhb.nhs.uk. Retrieved 2018-04-01.
  18. http://www.uhb.nhs.uk/Downloads/pdf/PosterImaging.pdf
  19. "Shot schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai leaves hospital". BBC News. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  20. "Malala Yousafzai tipped for Nobel Peace Prize win after amazing recovery from being shot by Taliban". BBC News. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
  21. "Fundraiser Stephen Sutton dies at 19". BBC News. 14 May 2014. Retrieved 14 May 2014.
  22. "Queen Elizabeth Hospital surgeon suspended over 'branding' claim". BBC News.
  23. "Birmingham nurse 'did not know where the appendix is'". BBC News. Retrieved 24 December 2013.

Coordinates: 52°27′06.08″N 1°56′35.06″W / 52.4516889°N 1.9430722°W / 52.4516889; -1.9430722

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