Detailed plans for a new A&E department at Leicester Royal Infirmary are due to be discussed by hospital bosses.
A full business case has been drawn up for the £43.3 million scheme to be considered by directors at Leicester's hospitals on Thursday.
The plans will then go to the NHS Trust Development Authority for approval.
Leicester City Council has already granted planning permission for the scheme and it is hoped that construction on phase one of the new A&E could begin in May this year with completion by the winter next year.
However, if approval by NHS Trust Development Authority is not given before March 20, when the period of purdah begins before the General Election, the whole project will have to be put on hold for six months.
In her report to directors Nicky Topham, project director, said the scheme has been designed to be flexible.
She said: "Within the emergency department, the minor illness and minor injury unit is a combined and totally flexible area for the urgent care centre.
"Majors (where the most seriously ill patients are seen) is designed in two sections so that half of majors can flex into an assessment area."
The structural design of the new department has also been developed so that there an be an extra floor at a later stage if needed.
Part of the existing Victoria building at the infirmary will be demolished to make way for the first phase of the building work to create the new A&E department.
Phase two, due to begin next winter, will comprise refurbishment of the old department to create medical assessment and geriatric units.
It is hoped that this will be complete by the summer 2017.
Ms Topham said that the design and size of the existing A&E are "deemed totally inadequate to cope with demand."
She added that findings by external experts showed that 12,600 A&E patients were "seen annually in a six-bedded resuscitation area where 10 beds were deemed to be more appropriate.
"And 52,000 ambulance patients passed through a 16 cubicled majors area.
"Inadequate space results in patients being lined up in trolleys in the open floor space in majors and doubled up in cubicles."
Ms Topham said that there is currently no access to x-ray and CT scan services within A&E and that the medical assessment wards are on the fifth floor of the infirmary's Balmoral building which meant there are often delays in moving patients to where they needed to be.
As well as providing better care for patients Ms Topham said the new building would help to "develop a centre of excellence, enhancing the trust's reputation for training, service delivery and treatment in modern accommodation."
