| Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham | |
| University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust | |
|---|---|
| The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, March 2011 | |
| Geography | |
| Location | Edgbaston, Birmingham, England |
| Organisation | |
| Care system | NHS |
| Affiliated university | University of Birmingham |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | Yes |
| Beds | 1,213 |
| History | |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Links | |
| Website | http://www.uhb.nhs.uk |
| Lists | Hospitals in England |
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is an NHS hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, situated very close to the University of Birmingham. The hospital, which cost £545 million to construct, opened in June 2010 replacing the previous Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital. The Trust employs more than 6,900 staff and provides adult services to more than half a million patients every year.
It is named after Queen Elizabeth, who became Queen Consort of the United Kingdom in 1936 as the wife of King George VI. From 1952 until her death in 2002 she was known as the Queen Mother.
The hospital provides a whole range of services including secondary services for its local population and regional and national services for the people of the West Midlands and beyond. The hospital has the largest solid organ transplantation programme in Europe. It has the largest renal transplant programme in the United Kingdom[1] and it is a national specialist centre for liver, heart and lung transplantation, as well as cancer studies. The hospital has the largest single-floor critical care unit in the world, with 100 beds and is the home of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine for military personnel injured in conflict zones. It is also a regional centre for trauma and burns. The hospital is served by University station which is a five minute walk away.
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The new hospital has been built adjacent to the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital site. It was built to replace the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital, although it has incorporated some of the newer parts of the current Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
It has been named the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, rather than the originally planned name of Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as the Ministry Of Justice ruled that no word can precede a Royal Title.[2][3]
Services from Selly Oak hospital moved in during the week beginning 16 June 2010, and services from the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital will finish moving in November 2011. For the Trust this allows simplification of operation due to two hospitals being relocated to one single site, which has the same capacity as the two previous hospitals combined.[4]
The hospital is now the new home of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which cares for injured service men and women from conflict zones, as well as training Army, Navy and Air Force medical staff.[5]
The new hospital cost a total of £545 million, and is part of a £1 billion urban regeneration plan for Bournbrook and Selly Oak which includes the construction of a £350 million retail development and the construction of the Selly Oak bypass. Plans for the new hospital were unveiled in 1998[6] and were approved by Birmingham City Council in October 2004[7] after the design was unveiled earlier that year.[8] The hospital is the first acute hospital to be built in Birmingham since 1937.[9]
The new building is part of a Private Finance Initiative with Consort Healthcare Ltd. There were problems with the scheme when plans for Consort to sign the deal fell through in March 2005. A deal was signed in early 2006.[10]
The hospital was designed by BDP Architects and construction, which was undertaken by Balfour Beatty,[10] began in June 2006. Five Liebherr 280 EC tower cranes supplied by Balfour Beatty Civil & Construction Plant Services (BBCCPS) were used during construction. Three of the cranes were among the tallest free-standing structures in the UK. One of the cranes was at its maximum free standing height, 90.2 m (295.9 ft) under the hook and could lift 12t at 27.9 m (91.5 ft) or 4.9t at 60 m (197 ft). The other two cranes stand at 79.5 m (260.8 ft).[11]
The first part to be completed was the £12 million multi-storey car park. A further £30 million was spent on preparing the site for construction. The finished complex comprises three 63 metre tall towers, each 9 stories tall.[12] These will contain the in-patient wards.[13] A sky-bridge leads from one of the towers to the retained estate containing the departments of oncology, the pharmacy and the Wellcome Research Centre.[14] As well as providing patient care, the hospital includes an education centre and retail outlets. The main atrium has a glass roof.[15]
The original Queen Elizabeth Hospital is an NHS hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham situated very close to the University of Birmingham.
The final round of service moves to the new hospital is due to happen on 11 October 2011.[16]
A variety of charitable hospitals opened in Birmingham between 1817, when the Orthopaedic Hospital opened, and 1881, when the Skin Hospital served its first patients. One of these, Queens Hospital, established in 1840 by a young local surgeon William Sands Cox, was predominantly for clinical instruction for the medical students of Birmingham. In 1884 these institutions, including Cox’s medical school, united as part of the University of Birmingham, on its new campus in Edgbaston. In 1922, Alderman W. A. Cadbury opposed the extension of the General Hospital in the city centre, and a new hospital in Edgbaston was proposed. Five years later an Executive Board for the building of this hospital, at an estimated cost of £1,000,000, was formed. Around 5/6ths of the money was to be dedicated to the hospital and one sixth to the University for the construction of the Medical School and in 1929 plans were drawn up for a 600-bed centre that would encourage clinical teaching of medicine, surgery, therapeutics, midwifery, diseases of women, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopaedics, dermatology, venereal disease and radiology. Britain was then in a period of financial crisis and there was controversy over the expense so in April 1930 an appeal to build the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was launched and by the following year donations exceeded £600,000 enabling construction to start in 1933. The building ultimately cost £1,029,057, which was £129,406 less than the money raised by donations.[17]
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