Over 50 new surgical centres will provide 100 operating rooms and 1,000 beds for millions more surgeries.
These beds and theatres will minimise wait times and provide patients with important surgeries.
Beds will be ring-fenced for scheduled procedures, lowering cancellation risk.
Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said today that over 50 new surgical centres would open throughout the UK to help smash Covid backlogs and provide hundreds of thousands of patients faster access to important treatments.
These hubs will add 100 operating rooms and 1,000 beds so patients can obtain surgery.
They’ll perform almost 2 million additional regular procedures over the next three years with £1.5 billion in government support.
This means 200k more procedures in 2022-23, 700k in 2023-24, and 1m in 2024-25.
As advised by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, they will specialise on high volume, low complexity surgery in ophthalmology, general surgery, trauma and orthopaedics (including spinal surgery), gynaecology, ear, nose, and throat, and urology.
Surgical centres on existing hospital facilities bring together staff skills and knowledge, lowering wait times for cataract surgery and hip replacements.
These procedures may be done efficiently in one location.
Improving quality and efficiency will imply shorter surgical waits, more same-day discharges, and fewer post-operative complications.
As hubs are segregated from emergency care, surgical beds are kept vacant for scheduled surgeries, minimising cancellations and boosting infection control.
Steve Barclay said:
We can’t continue business as normal to reduce Covid backlogs and meet future demand.
Surgical centres are an example of how we’re innovating and growing capacity to meet surgical shortages around the nation, to raise the number of operations and minimise waiting times.
We’ve made headway in reducing patient wait times, and these new surgical centres will provide more surgeries over the next three years, including over 200,000 this year.
Amanda Pritchard, NHS chief executive:
Surgical hubs are crucial to recovering elective services in England, and these new venues will help us combat covid-19 backlogs.
From surgical hubs to robotic surgery, our crew continues to identify creative methods to speed up treatment for patients.
The hubs will also assist resolve difference in performance across trusts, since they must fulfil national requirements on numbers of operations, full utilisation of theatre facilities, and same-day discharges.
This will boost national performance.
The government and NHS have identified surgical hub hotspots.
The selection process for surgical hub locations is clinically guided and strives to ensure the new hubs are linked to the relevant local services, such as acute hospital sites, while encouraging the greatest results for patients and providing value for taxpayers.
20 new or enlarged hubs have been verified, and bids for the other hubs will be examined in the next weeks and months as additional business cases are submitted to decide the new sites fulfil design criteria.
The new centres will provide outpatient and inpatient (overnight or day case) operations, offering almost 2 million extra treatments over the next three years, or 12% of total elective activity in 2019/20.
They’ll promote the most efficient surgeries, keeping fewer patients overnight and freeing up time for other procedures.
91 surgical hubs have opened, and more than 140 will be operational by 2024/25. Also:
The South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre has five state-of-the-art operating theatres and welcomes UK patients.
3,000 of its 5,200 surgeries are joint replacements.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has boosted surgical capacity by 25% and intends to minimise cancellations.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has reduced the duration of stay for hip and knee replacement patients, enabling more to go home the day following surgery.
On the following years, the government will spend £5.9 billion in elective recovery.
Along with surgical centres, the NHS is building over 90 community diagnostic facilities in sports stadiums and retail malls.
They’ve provided over 1.6 million checkups, tests, and scans, bringing healthcare closer to people. 160 will operate by 2025.
Innovative ways have helped reduce waiting queues.
The NHS said last month that two-year delays for normal treatment had been almost eliminated, save when patients wanted to wait longer, did not want to travel to be treated quickly, or for particularly complicated situations needing expert care.
This was the first aim set out in the Elective Recovery Plan in February, and NHS workers continue to reduce lengthy waits, with nearly a third fewer individuals waiting 18 months or more since January.
Background
The 2021 Spending Review budgeted £1.5 billion for surgical centres. Existing hubs are also upgraded.
Additional activity and financing per region:
RegionsFunding
Electives (22/23-24/25)
Activity (22/23-24/25)
£189m 75k 10900 London £265m 155k 207k Midlands
£288ms151700s98300
Northeast, Yorkshire
£230ms120200s83200
£188m, 153,400, 70300
South East: £218m; South West: £170m
*Elective means day cases and overnights. Outpatients are non-admitted patients undergoing local anesthesia-only procedures.
The 20 hubs revealed today are:
RegionsLocation
Expanded
London
The NMH
NewsLondon
Western Eye
NewLondonPurley (Croydon University Hospital)
NLUH Lewisham
NewsLondon
St. Thomas’
NewsLondon
The RNO (Stanmore)
NewsLondon
KGMH
NewsLondon
Hospital Homerton
NewsLondon
North-central London places (Moorfields)
Hospital NEY Friarage
New NEY St. Luke’s
New Dewsbury Hospital
New EAHS
New EIH
East Colchester Hospital
Whiston Hospital
London Newham Hospital
Expansion
LCM Hospital
Expansion
Midlands
Expanding Princess Royal Hospital
NWWGH Expansion