Move comes after there were 542 A&E waits of twelve hours or more at the hospital during December, reports Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter

Barnet Hospital is to boost staff numbers and expand its emergency department after seeing a record number of attendances during the winter.

The hospital has received £7million from Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust to enable it to hire around 17 more doctors and nurses.

It has also received capital investment to expand its emergency department – including the waiting room and ambulance handover space – by around 2,000 square metres.

Hospital chief executive Deborah Sanders gave details of the cash boost during a meeting of the council’s health overview and scrutiny committee on Wednesday.

Deborah said the trust had seen a “very, very busy winter in emergency care pathways” – particularly in December, when there were almost 12,000 attendances.

Figures published earlier this year revealed there were 542 accident and emergency (A&E) waits of twelve hours or more in Barnet during December – up from 351 during the previous month.

The chief executive explained that in response to the surge in numbers, the trust had made “significant investment into the Barnet [emergency] department, both in terms of staffing and the estate”.

Deborah said: “We have had investment of around £7m, which equates to about 17 more staff members, both doctors and nurses, so we are really grateful to the trust for that.”

The chief executive told councillors the hospital had hired more nursing staff but junior doctors were proving harder to recruit, although new consultants had been appointed. Already, she added, there had been improvements in “time to initial assessment, ambulance handover waits, and overall four-hour performance”.

Deborah explained that when Barnet Hospital’s emergency department was last refurbished, in 2014, it was designed to see 275 patients a day – which would equate to around 8,500 patients a month. Operating at a higher capacity leads to “overcrowding”, which has “safety implications” and can be “very unpleasant” for patients and staff.

Despite the extra investment in the emergency department, which will allow it to build an “infill” development on courtyard space, Deborah said that over time it will “probably need to be bigger”.

Under questioning from councillors, the chief executive said the hospital wanted to provide an “urgent treatment centre” where people who walk to the hospital would receive emergency care instead of going straight to A&E. Some patients who arrive at the centre could then be referred to A&E under a “triage” system, she explained.

Current initiatives designed to manage demand include “virtual wards” that use technology to allow people to receive care at home, helping to reduce attendances and enabling people to be discharged sooner.

James Mass, the council’s director of adult social care, told the committee that a special team had been set up to allow around 140 Barnet residents to receive support at home rather than having to go to the hospital’s emergency department.

He added: “We then work very closely with our health partners around those individuals leaving hospital who need care and support when they go back home, whether that’s back in their own homes or needing to move to a residential nursing home.

“We have a programme of work around how we can make that even slicker, including making sure that we have got the right care provision and that the join-up between the discharge team within the hospital, the community health provision, and the council provision is really joined up, so we get people in the right place really quickly.”

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