Midland Metropolitan Hospital takes shape ahead of 2018 opening

Due to open in October 2018, the super-hospital in Smethwick is being created to provide maternity, children’s and inpatient adult services to an estimated half a million people.
After securing the contract to build the Midland Met, Carillion plc began construction in January.
The hospital will have 670 beds and 15 operation theatres, as well as brand-new diagnostic equipment.

The Midland Met's A&E will replace emergency care facilities at City Hospital, while Sandwell’s General Hospital’s A&E will become an urgent care centre.
The new hospital is only one of several major developments planned for Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, with an expanded intermediate care centre on the City Hospital site and the Sandwell Treatment Centre on the current Sandwell General Hospital site. The Sandwell Treatment Centre will house a large urgent care centre.

The 16-acre site of the hospital is being built on land that currently borders London Street, Heath Street, Grove Lane, Grove Street and Cape Arm Canal in Smethwick.
Meanwhile it is not just the Express & Star photographers who are capturing the construction site, as the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust has invited members of the public to enter their best photographs of the local community and historic health care buildings in a two-year competition.
Every month until the opening, a panel of judges, led by Professor Jonathan Berg, well-known exhibiting photographer and author of photo book ‘Positively Birmingham’, will decide on the best entries that will then go through to the next stage of the competition.
Professor Berg, who is Director of Pathology at the Trust, said: “There is so much to capture as we move from our old hospital sites, especially the historic buildings at Dudley Road. I really look forward to people taking interesting and quirky photos of the buildings that have served us so well over the last 100 years or so.”

Entries can be made via the Trust website on swbh.nhs.uk/capturingthecommunity.

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