A new £12.5m endoscopy unit has opened at a Norfolk hospital which has been described as the most dilapidated in the country.
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn says the new department sets the standard for the quality of care which will be available across the site, if the government gives the go-ahead for its proposed rebuild.
The unit features digital interactive information screens in waiting rooms which allow patients to download details about the facility and their procedure to their mobile phones.
Touch screens in nurse bay areas also provide improved communication and share patient and room information.
Hospital chief executive Caroline Shaw, who is set leave the QEH this week after three years in charge, said: “I am thrilled to have opened this new state-of-the-art facility. It provides a much-improved experienced for patients and staff and is a significant development for QEH in modernising our hospital and helping to achieve our ambition of being the best rural district general hospital for patient and staff experience.”
Gastroenterology consultant Dr Shailesh Karanth said: “This new unit is fantastic news for our patients and staff.
"It modernises our facilities and will enable all endoscopies - a procedure where organs inside your body are looked at using a long, usually flexible tube with a lens on one end and a video camera on the other - to take place in one unit.”
The new unit, near the hospital's main entrance, is part of a £38m modernisation programme at the QEH.
It includes a new outpatient unit, which opened in January, a new eye care centre, which opened in May 2022, a new maternity unit which opened in June 2022, and a new dementia-friendly ward which opened in July.
The new endoscopy unit also creates the 'decant' space needed for the work continuing to install failsafe roof supports in the main theatres, where concrete planks which are more than a decade beyond their working life are failing.
More than 1,500 props are needed to hold the roof up. Some £90m is being spent over three years on supporting the structure.
The hospital is waiting to hear whether it will be including in the government's new build programme, after drawing up plans for a £862m rebuild.
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