THE first stage of work to help ease pressure on a busy hospital accident and emergency department is expected to be finished by September.

The urgent care centre at the Royal Sussex County Hospital’s accident and emergency department has been undergoing a revamp since March.

The centre is staffed by GPs and used for patients who do not need to see an A&E doctor.

This helps reduce demand on the A&E unit so staff can deal with more serious cases that come in.

The work will create four extra treatment areas and two more assessment spaces for the centre.

Better use will also be made of the space in the area and around the A&E entrance.

The changes are separate to a planned £30 million redesign of the whole A&E department which was approved by NHS Improvement earlier this year.

The first stage of the work, which involves increasing capacity for patients who don’t arrive by ambulance, is due to be finished before the winter.

The Royal Sussex has been struggling to meet waiting times for patients in the department, with about 74.2 per cent of arrivals waiting more than four hours to be seen, treated and either admitted or discharged.

This is well below the national target of 95 per cent but is an improvement on recent months.

A report to Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust board said hospital continued to face challenges and most delays were caused by a lack of available beds.

This was partly a result of the number of patients who were ready to be discharged but no nursing or care home bed was available or arrangements for support in their own home had not been made.

The report said: “Waiting for admission to an inpatient ward remained the highest single reason for patients waiting longer than four hours in A&E.

“Difficulties in access to beds due to formal delayed transfers of care patients decreased further in April to 7.6 per cent compared to March’s 9.89 per cent.

“In real terms this reflects approximately 82 bed on average occupied by patients who should be cared for in an non-acute setting, but an improvement of 18 beds since March.”

The report said no patient had waited more than 12 hours for a bed after a decision had been made to admit them to a ward.

Work carried out by the trust to reduce bed-blocking has included opening up extra beds at a unit in Newhaven.

It is also working with Brighton and Hove City Council and the city’s clinical commissioning group to try to help speed up the discharge process.