New electric vehicles for Royal Orthopaedic Hospital

The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital has announced that it has replaced all of its pathology vehicles with electric cars, as part of its ambition to help ‘make Birmingham a cleaner city’.

The Nissan Leaf cars, which are part of the trust’s wider net carbon reduction strategy, are used to collect and deliver blood samples to the Pathology Team.

The vehicles are used for the specimen and blood collection for the Birmingham-based trust, which is a 24/7 service. There are two Pod Point charging points located outside of the Estates building, opposite the hospital’s Main Entrance and more are planned in the future. They are currently charged out-of-hours and last an estimated 200 miles when fully charged.

Scheduled collections and drop-offs are between ROH and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston but the cars occasionally travel to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, which is in the Clean Air Zone. The Estates Team also support ad-hoc requests to other NHS providers and requests from departments such as Theatres, to deliver and collect equipment. They are hoping to create a more permanent logistics provision to support the wider system in the future.