A redesigned emergency department is high on Manx Care’s capital priority list.

Chief executive Teresa Cope told a Tynwald scrutiny committee that the number of patients using A&E at Noble’s has doubled since the hospital was built 20 years ago.

She said it doesn’t have a modern layout nor facilities for same-day emergency care.

‘Not everybody who attends the emergency department can be seen, treated and discharged within four hours,’ she explained.

‘Some patients require a longer work up, which is entirely clinically appropriate, but that shouldn’t necessarily be done in the emergency department itself.

‘But we don’t want to admit patients to hospital who don’t need admission.’

She said it was important to have an associated area dealing with same-day emergency care and offering a clinical decisions unit.

There is no funding allocated for the development, she said, adding: ‘It’s high on the capital priority list. There is an amount of funding for the drawings, to start scoping what that piece of work would look like.’

A recent report revealed the emergency department at Noble’s was originally designed for 20,000 patients annually but is now managing nearly 44,000.

This has led to multiple complaints relating to excessive waiting times, as well as an inadequate care environment for vulnerable patients and delays in diagnostics and admission handovers.

Director of operations Shaun Stacey told the social affairs policy review committee that the increase in emergency department demand was driven in part by the island’s ageing population.

And he said: ‘It is far to say people are waiting longer to get help so therefore when they attend to hospital their needs are greater than they thought they were.’

Ms Cope said there was no evidence to suggest that people are coming to the emergency department because they can’t get an appointment with their GP.