A new £1.2 million rapid assessment area for emergency patients has been opened at a hospital.

Staff at Queen's Hospital Emergency Department have opened a new rapid assessment area to help quickly assess and treat patients arriving by ambulance.

The new Rapid Assessment and First Treatment area was built with a £1.2 million investment.

Queen's Hospital which is part of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust receives more ambulances that almost any other hospital in London.

The new area is designed to enable staff to make decisions on a treatment plan and swiftly move patients to the right area of the hospital to continue their care.

It has more cubicle space and a new side room allowing more capacity to meet the demand of arriving ambulances, enabling teams from the London Ambulance Service and East of England Ambulance Service to handover their patients quickly and efficiently.

London Ambulance Service paramedic Dominic Young said: "If we can turnaround from hospital quicker, we can get back out there and get to people who need us quicker.’

The area also has displays showing both ambulance services arrival information to help with coordination.

Katie Mortimer, a Sister, said: "The displays give a helpful overview, so if staff in Rapid Assessment and First Treatment area see that a number of ambulances are arriving to the hospital, they can easily escalate this so that the team can see if there are patients who can be moved as more patients arrive."

There is also a new designated seating area with comfortable chairs for those who do not need to be cared for on a trolley initially.

The new area has its own phlebotomy room and cubicles have machines monitoring patients' vital signs which can also be monitored from the central desk area to allow staff to act quickly if a patient's condition deteriorates.