MTX has created a six-bed discharge lounge and five-bed palliative care ward in a new facility at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to deliver the build within timescales supporting RAAC recovery work on the site.
The two-storey facility is a standalone building designed to be reused when a planned new hospital is built, with bespoke ground floor and first floor corridors linking back to the main building & hospital ‘street’. The discharge lounge was commissioned to support the
ongoing RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) failsafe programme of works within the QEH site. The discharge lounge provides care for patients ready to leave hospital as they wait to go home, or to receive further care in the community. The existing discharge lounge will be demolished as part of the RAAC eradication works.
Located on the new building’s first floor, the five-bed palliative care unit offers patients a dignified and comfortable place to receive end-of-life care, in a calming and peaceful space away from busy hospital wards. Each room is en-suite, and sympathetically equipped, so family members can be comfortable as they spend time with their loved ones. The building is located in a courtyard at the rear of the hospital site. The new location allows easier access for patients and staff, and will take high volumes of site traffic away from the busy hospital ‘front door’ and Emergency Department areas of the site. It will also enhance privacy for patients being discharged.
The design includes a new bed lift for easy patient access to the ground floor discharge area.
Internal fit-out included HTM-compliant air-handling systems, along with power, medical gases, and other bedside services.
The contract was awarded by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, with whose multidisciplinary design and construction consultancy partner, exi, MTX worked. exi is managing the RAAC failsafe programme at QEH. MTX and MMC were selected following MTX’s successful delivery of the new Endoscopy building on the QEH site in 2023.
MTX MD, David Hartley, explained: “The new building was fabricated off site while complex enabling works and site preparation was undertaken prior to the factory-manufactured structural units arriving on site. The project required re-routing of existing services, and building within the constraints of a tight courtyard site surrounded by live hospital wards and the Macmillan Centre. This meant that craning in modules was the best solution, because it reduced overall site/construction time and fit within the tight RAAC programme, while minimising disruption to the existing site operation and services.”
