New urgent treatment centre at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary 'starts with a bang'
A new urgent treatment centre (UTC) at a Newcastle hospital saw 1,500 patients in its first two weeks.
Health chiefs opened the new facility next to the Royal Victoria Infirmary’s emergency department last month.
It is hoped that the centre will help cut the pressure on A&E by providing an alternative space where people with urgent, but not life-threatening, conditions can be seen.
Councillors were told on Thursday that around 1,500 patients had attended the UTC, for which around 25 new staff have been recruited, in the fortnight after it opened on January 19.
That averages out at around five times more people per day than were going to the old UTC on Westgate Road, which closed in November 2022 due to staffing shortages.
Previously-published figures showed that the number of GP shifts being covered at the former West End facility had dipped as low as 63% before its closure and that an average of just 21 patients per day were attending the facility.
Caroline Docking, the Newcastle Hospitals NHS trust’s director of communications and corporate affairs, told a health scrutiny committee meeting at Newcastle City Council: “In the first two weeks we had around 1,500 people coming through [the new UTC]. They really did start with a bang. Around 90% were seen within four hours.
“It is incredibly busy at the hospital at the moment, all of our pathways are all very pressured at the moment.”
She urged that people still seek out other health services, if possible, before going to the RVI – such as the city’s two other UTCs, in Byker and Cowgate.
Ms Docking added: “It is important that we encourage people to use other services in the system – to go to GPs, to go to the other urgent treatment centres.”
A second phase of building work at the UTC will see a new walkway built between it and the emergency department, which it is hoped will be completed this summer.