Queen Elizabeth Hospital Royal Opening

The Queen is officially naming the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham today (Thursday 12 July 2012) during her Diamond Jubilee Tour, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh.
 
The Royal couple are visiting the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) as part of a two-day visit to the West Midlands. They are due to be greeted by waiting crowds outside the main entrance before moving inside to talk to a mixture of patients, staff and volunteers.

The hospital, which revolutionises healthcare design, provides 1,231 beds as well as an accident and emergency department, specialist burns and transplant wards, a decontamination suite and 30 operating theatres.

The hospital is conceived as three elliptical bedroom towers sitting over a high tech medical treatment podium. Externally, this helps soften the scale of the hospital, and enables maximum exploitation of the fabulous views over Birmingham.

Andrew Smith, Project Director and head of Healthcare at BDP, said ‘This is a much needed facility for Birmingham. Our design is focused on the concerns of the individual patient. The design supports the efficient provision of the best possible clinical service in an environment that is attractive and uplifting, not only for patients themselves, but also their visitors and the staff who provide their care’.

BDP, as masterplanners, architects, landscape architects and acoustic consultants, were responsible for the design of the site masterplan and the acute teaching hospital for the University Hospital Birmingham Foundation Trust. The first patients moved in to the hospital in June 2010.