Planning approval for a new helipad at the QMC has been granted and work is now expected to begin on the £3.2 million project.
An onsite helipad will be located at the south side of the hospital and is designed to speed up the time it takes to get patients to the A&E department.
This comes after QMC bosses said they want a new trauma centre to replace the current A&E department.
Patients currently have to be transferred by ambulance from the off-site landing area to A&E.
But the new helipad will save patients from that journey.
Andrew Chatten, Director of Estates for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust which runs the QMC, said: “This is an important step in making this project a reality.
“There remains much to do but this formal planning approval is an important milestone that means we can move onto the next phase of the project.
“This facility will help improve the care to the most critically injured patients from across the region helping them to be treated more quickly, reducing the transfer time from 15 minutes to less than five minutes from the helicopter to A&E.”
The helipad will sit on a raised platform within Curie Court car park, close to Clifton Boulevard at the south eastern end of the QMC.
Nottingham Hospitals Charity have raised £2.5 million towards the project and the rest will be through a £700,000 investment by NUH.
Nottingham Hospitals Charity chief executive Barbara Cathcart said: “Access to a helipad at our A&E department at Queen’s Medical Centre is vital to saving minutes and saving lives.
“It will substantially reduce transfer times for injured patients to under five minutes and will save time and resources for the ambulance service.”
The raised deck helipad is expected to be operational in the early part of 2018 and there will still be spaces for parking underneath.
