Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust has celebrated a key milestone for its new Pathology building with a traditional roof topping ceremony.
The jointly funded £8 million development involves a two storey extension to the current pathology building on the Heartlands Hospital site to accommodate a new centralised core laboratory. The facility will also house a state-of-the-art molecular biology laboratory for the diagnosis of infectious diseases and genetically acquired conditions.
The team of 400 laboratory medicine and Health Protection Agency (HPA) staff working in the laboratory currently turn around more than 2.6 million clinical sample requests every year for the Hospital Trust and GPs in the surrounding community. The extension will increase the laboratory’s capacity in line with demand, whilst modernising the services provided for patients and public health.
Completion of the building work was marked by Lord Philip Hunt, the Trust’s Chairman who placed the last tile on the building’s roof, thereby completing this key stage of the building development.
Lord Hunt commented:
“I’m thrilled to see the progress on the Heartlands pathology complex. Providing an excellent patient experience is at the core of what we do. This new development allows us to provide an improved service including an increased amount of samples turned around every year and 24 hour service for local GPs.”
