It is surely the most ramshackle hospital in the country, prevented from collapse by makeshift metal beams and timber boards. With the government offering no immediate prospect of repair or replacement, CHRIS BISHOP was taken on a tour of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, finding scenes that should shame ministers into action
A consultant looks up at the steel and timber props which have created a bottleneck in the main corridor leading to the operating theatres so narrow that two people can barely pass.
"Don't get me started," he says. "You go to medical school to become a doctor to do the best for your patients, but you're constantly hampered by failures in the system, failures in the the infrastructure that you have no control of."
The many problems and frustrations facing the health service are familiar to patients and staff across the region, but the obstacle presented by these props are particular to King's Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
The site opened in the early 1980s, from prefabricated planks with an expected working life of 30 years.
Forty years on, they are collapsing and need to be buttressed by thousands of these props, installed across the complex at great expense, to literally stop its ceiling from falling in.
For years, there have been calls for the government to replace or fully renovate the crumbling site, yet there is no decision on the horizon.
Instead, all is resting on those props to keep the site safe and operational. The hospital already has three times as many of them as its 500 beds.
And they are more than just an embarrassing eyesore, as the consultant points out.
"We have to push people on trolleys through here. We're in a rush. What happens if we hit one of these things?"
Such thoughts are a daily consideration for staff at the hospital, and for good reason.
Late last month was a reminder that every day that the problem is not resolved it is getting worse.
During the last heatwave, the roof in this corridor started sagging, meaning it had to be cordoned off for emergency repairs, and operating theatres were abandoned.
Three theatres were closed, with patients transferred to the Sandringham Unit, elsewhere on the site as a well-rehearsed plan swung into action.
Further upheavals are expected, either through further movement of the roof, or to clear areas to enable extra support to be fitted under a £90m, three-year plan to shore up the entire roof of the hospital.
"We've got two theatres at the Sandringham we're going to have to look at using," said Liz Barker, head of nursing for surgery at the hospital. "Our staff, the surgeons will work out of hours and at weekends, that's going to be an upheaval for everybody but our staff are excellent, they really are."
The same can no longer be said for the environment they are expected to work in.
VIEW FROM A WARD
Patients on Necton Ward, on the hospital's first floor, look up from their beds to see baulks of timber shoring up the roof.
While they prevent it from collapsing, they don't keep the elements out.
Sarah Jones, the hospital's deputy chief operating officer, said: "When it rains, the roof leaks terribly. We have to get great big black bins and put them around the wards to catch the water.
"We have to lose bed space sometimes. You can't have a patient under a waterfall."
Matron Mohan Phulmattie said: "We need an answer for this roof and we need it urgently."
NEW BUILD IS ONLY ANSWER
The only answer is a new hospital, whichever way you look at it.
As Tory leadership hopefuls Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak trade blows in the run-up to the leadership election, west Norfolk can only hope it will be among eight further new builds set to be announced by whoever ends up in Number 10.
King's Lynn was somehow missed off the original list of 40 new hospitals announced by Boris Johnson two years ago.
Ms Truss, whose South West Norfolk constituency is served by the hospital, has made hopeful noises, while health secretary and North East Cambridgeshire MP Steve Barclay has also spoken out in favour of a replacement. Both have visited the hospital.
A model of the new hospital, which would cost £862m in today's money, sits hopefully in the foyer.
It would be built on what is currently the car park at the Gayton Road site, after a new multi-storey car park is built to replace lost spaces.
TICKING TIMEBOMB
Patient Geoff Dix, 70, from Heacham, has spent a week on Necton after being admitted for treatment of fluid on his lung.
"In the Middle Ages, they built churches that lasted for thousands of years," he said. "In the 1970s, they built a hospital that wouldn't even last for 50."
How long the QEH will remain safe remains to be seen. The government has pledged £90m to fund a rolling programme of replacing temporary props and timbers with more permanent measures.
Mrs Jones said surveyors were continually checking the planks, while signs around the hospital urge staff and patients to report anything unusual.
Nichola Hunter, the hospital's acting director of estates and facilities, said the whole of the first floor needed supporting.
"We're doing wards two at a time, putting in a steel framework which supports the concrete planks," she said.
"But that won't extend the life of the concrete planks, we've only got until 2030 after which this building will no longer be safe to be used, so we need a decision now."
If it gets the go-ahead, the new hospital would be ready to begin treating its first patients as the existing one has to be abandoned.
If not, staff say there is no Plan B.
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