Hammersmith Hospital

Hammersmith Hospital’s A&E service is provided by the emergency unit (EU) and the urgent care centre. The hospital also has the Trust 24-hour heart assessment centre (receiving patients by ambulance with high risk cardiac chest pain) and the Trust renal unit, both of which accept acute specialty patients into their own facilities.

Hammersmith Hospital EU is an acute receiving unit for medical emergencies by ambulance as well as patients who walk in with a broad range of conditions. The urgent care centre is run in partnership with London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative and the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust. It is open from 08.00 to 22.00 while the EU is open 24 hours a day.

In March Hammersmith Hospital saw 4544 emergency attends, 98.53 per cent of who were seen and discharged within four hours.

Our time to initial assessment for ambulance arrivals has reduced again this month and we are continuing to work to our action plan developed in conjunction with London Ambulance service to improve this.

Hammersmith Hospital also scores well when benchmarked with other London hospitals with data from the ambulance service electronic handover system.
Our emergency department should only be used in an emergency situation. We know that there are patients that attend our emergency department on a frequent basis.

We are helping these patients to find services that are most suited to their needs - through their GP, a walk-in centre, a pharmacy or by contacting NHS Direct. This group of patients may include those who are not registered with a GP.

The hospital has achieved its target for ‘time in department’ and ‘time to treatment’ each month this year.

As a Trust we are committed to reviewing the pathway for patients requiring admission to ensure patients are transferred safely and quickly to an appropriate bed.

We are also working on pathways for a number of conditions to provide appropriate services that will avoid the need for admission.