Health and care services are set to be delivered from St George’s health and wellbeing hub in Havering, North East London, when it opens later this month.
The new site in Hornchurch is hoped to ‘create an opportunity’ to relieve pressure on the ‘overloaded A&E’ at Queen’s Hospital and to improve care locally.
The hub will provide a range of integrated services from the NHS, the council, and local voluntary and community groups, seven days a week for the 250,000 residents of Havering and the surrounding areas.
These include GP and mental health services, outpatient clinics, community care and diagnostic facilities for earlier cancer diagnosis.
It will also provide space for local voluntary and community groups to deliver activities to support people’s wider health and wellbeing needs, as well as a community café, multi-purpose education and meeting spaces and a sensory, dementia-friendly communal garden.
Hornchurch and Upminster MP Julia Lopez said: ‘With integrated health and social care services, plus a diagnostics hub that will see thousands more tests and scans delivered every year, St George’s looks set to become a national model of best practice.
‘Not only that, but it creates an opportunity for Queen’s Hospital to remodel the overloaded A&E so that emergency care locally improves too.’
Key benefits of the hub include:
- convenient access to a wide range of services in one location that has good public transport links and parking.
- the ability to book appointments and be seen by multiple professionals during a single visit.
- quicker access to diagnostic services and faster referrals between services so people can be seen and treated more quickly.
- fewer hospital visits and admissions.
- easy access to support from local charities and community groups, such as exercise classes, bereavement groups and social activities, even in the evening and weekends.
- opportunity to speak to non-health professionals about issues such as housing that may affect their health.
For more information and updates, visit St George’s hub.
