04 May 2024 , 17:59
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Patients have been driven out of a UK hospital twice as its ceilings keep falling down.
Stepping Hill Hospital in Greater Manchester has seen two ceiling collapses over recent weeks because of heating-system leaks. Both collapses happened inside the radiology department and the critical care unit. Seriously ill patients receive intensive and high-dependency treatments in the wards.
The hospital, based in Stockport, has been struggling with its ageing buildings for years and was becoming increasingly decrepit. Its continuous major structural concerns were being called "dangerous for both patients and staff".
The two ceiling collapses follow the 'immediate' complete closure of the hospital’s Outpatient B department in November. The closure came because of a ‘significant deterioration of the structure of the building’, according to inspectors.
That outpatient unit is now only providing 51 per cent of the outpatient appointments it should. Some of the services that were provided in the Outpatient B unit are now operating at less than the previous capacity.
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“A small number of services, including ophthalmology, are still to be found temporary homes due to the need to accommodate large pieces of equipment that are not easy to move,” said a report from Stockport NHS Foundation Trust chief executive, Karen James, to the most recent board meeting in April.
“Our estates team is prioritising efforts to find alternative accommodation for those services as well as permanent homes for the others as we move forward with the demolition of Outpatients B.”
The first partial ceiling collapse in recent weeks occurred on March 4 in the hospital’s radiology department because of a leak, which meant it had to cancel several scheduled procedures. The trust has not disclosed how many appointments were affected, the Guardian reported.
The second collapse happened the very next day in its critical care unit, it has also been reported, where seriously ill patients receiving intensive and high-dependency care are treated.
Staff had to move quickly to get patients out of the 13-bed unit to ensure no one was hurt. Evacuated patients were initially cared for in some of Stepping Hill’s 20 operating theatres. Some were then reportedly transferred to a nearby hospital while repairs were carried out.
Ms James told the board that, alongside the closure of the outpatient unit, "we have also suffered unexpected and unrelated ceiling collapses in our critical care unit and radiology department, caused by leaks from the heating system". She added: “The critical care unit had to be evacuated but no patients suffered harm thanks to the prompt actions of our staff. The leak in the radiology department did cause the cancellation of some appointments.”
The chief executive also warned that the "estates problems are more frequently impacting our services … we are likely to experience more business continuity issues as the result of our ageing buildings". Ms James suggested that making the repairs could be difficult as the trust will ‘have to be realistic about the amount of capital funding that is likely to be available in 2024-25 to maintain the current hospital buildings’.