Reading urgent care centre in mall could move to hospital

While there has been a walk-in GP clinic on the first floor of the Broad Street Mall for years, in 2022, the local NHS decided to beef up services provided there by providing an urgent care centre at the site as well.

But the future of the urgent care centre in Broad Street Mall is uncertain, as the organisation in charge of the NHS could move the service in its entirety to the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

The Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire (BOB) Integrated Care Board (ICB) is in charge of planning and delivering healthcare services in the three counties.

The potential move was discussed at a Reading Borough Council health and wellbeing board meeting.

Rachael Corser, the chief nursing officer at the BOB ICB, stated the urgent care centre at the mall 'has not had the desired impact' of reducing pressure on the emergency department at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

The Royal Berkshire Hospital.

Therefore, the BOB could move all urgent care services into the hospital to ease patient redirections.

However, figures show that 2,531 patients from outside the BOB area and 1,317 unregistered patients used the urgent care centre in the mall.

READ MORE: Patients report 'chaos' at Royal Berkshire Hospital in A&E department

This prompted Liz Terry, the council leader to argue the service should remain at the mall to serve those people.

Cllr Terry (Labour, Coley) said: "It may well be they are using it because actually it enables them to have easy access because it's where they spend most of their day.

"I know that lots of people do work at home now more than they used to, but most retail people don't, there are lots of occupations certainly around the town centre where that won't be the case, and there will still be the office workers.

"I'm curious, if it enables them to see a GP, it certainly helps our economic area.

"If they are working here they are kind of important to all of us.

"It felt like the decision you were coming to co-locate was wrong."

Answering that, Mrs Coarser said: "There's national evidence now that co-locating with a main emergency department site has more impact."

Katie Prichard-Thomas, chief nursing officer at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust added: "Not only do many people not arrive at the off-site urgent care centre, it may cause a reattendance in the emergency department at a later date.

"Also, the co-located urgent care centre would stream off about 70-90 patients out of our emergency department every day."

She then explained that redirection of patients who were sent from the hospital to the urgent care centre caused problems, such as travel times or patients choosing not to attend altogether.

Katie said: "When you are not very well from a patient experience and safety perspective isn't the best thing for those people either.

"I think this is the right decision."

Concerns lingered, with cllr Terry arguing that relocating the care centre would cause problems for those who use it.

Mrs Coarser answered: "If there is an unmet need for unregistered people within the population that need access to healthcare that we address that."

Cllr Terry replied: "We can keep both, we can have one at the hospital and keep the one we've got, that would be nice, wouldn't it?"

Members noted the report at the meeting on October 11.

The Healthcare Resourcing Group (HCRG) is contracted to provide the urgent care centre at the mall until March 2025.

A spokesperson for the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust said: "Patients are still able to walk-in to the Urgent Care Centre at Broad Street Mall; however, patients presenting at Royal Berkshire Hospital’s Emergency Department who don’t need to receive emergency treatment can now be signposted to an urgent care service at the hospital, rather than having to travel to Broad Street Mall.

"The location of future walk-in services in Reading is under review, but the BOB ICB is committed to ensuring patients are able to access the healthcare services they need."