EMERGENCY patients can expect a shorter wait when attending Hillingdon Hospital, thanks to two new treatment units.

Its Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AECU) and the Rapid Assessment Medical Unit (RAMU) are housed within the Acute Medical Unit.

The new units are intended to ‘top slice’ emergency and acute patient numbers, cut waiting times and improve the flow of patients through the hospital by diverting less serious cases away from A&E.

Dr Fiona Wisniacki, Deputy Divisional Director of Emergency Care, explained the process.

“The aim is to avoid A&E attendance as the patient will, ultimately, come directly to the AECU or RAMU,” she said.

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“It’s very easy to decide whether you are either walking or if you are too sick to sit, in which case you go to an area that makes use of trolleys.”

A verbal handover is made from a clinician in A&E, the patient’s GP or the Urgent Care Centre doctor to the medical team.

AECU – a former doctor’s office – has been converted to a bay with six cubicles housing treatment chairs.

RAMU is a larger bay inside AMU, enabling patients to be treated on a trolley before either being discharged or admitted to a bed.

Decisions by senior staff about where the patient goes next are crucial to ensuring length of stay is reduced.