New care centre to deliver 100K more appointments a year

Phase two of the East Midlands Planned Care Centre (EMPCC) is due to welcome its first patients next month.

Based in the former Brandon Unit at Leicester General Hospital, it will be a hub for elective – non-urgent – procedures, with nine specialities set to expand into it initially.

These will range from general surgery and gastroenterology to bloods and urology.

However, the space is designed to be flexible, meaning specialities can move in and out of the centre depending on where the demand is.

The £40 million centre is intended to cut the length of time patients are waiting for non-urgent care.

Simon Barton, deputy chief executive at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) said the centre will ‘massively reduce waiting times’ for elective care patients.

The longest waits – 65 weeks – would come down to less than a year, he said.

Mr Barton said the trust’s aim was to get back to the pre-pandemic target of 18-weeks.

Consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Hazel Busby-Earle, said the new centre will also offer more certainty for patients.

She said that patients currently can make all the arrangements for their surgery and arrive at the hospital, only for their procedure to be cancelled due to an incoming emergency case.

Because the EMPCC is specifically to deliver elective and less complex care, there is less chance of procedures being pushed back, she added.

She said: “It takes a lot physically, emotionally, mentally to get yourself ready for a surgical procedure.

"You arrange childcare, you arrange support, you arrange time off from work, then you come into the hospital and your procedure is cancelled, through not fault of your own and through no fault of the surgeon.

“A facility like this is going to significantly reduce the risk of a procedure being cancelled.

"So people having less complex procedures can come in, can have their procedure on the day it’s supposed to happen and can go home.”

The new centre is set to open to patients on Monday, December 9.

A pharmacy will also be opened on the site at a later date.