The first patients have been welcomed to Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s (WWL) newest Theatre.
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Rob Smith, delivered the first list of lower limb procedures in the new Theatre 12 development at Wrightington Hospital, which, alongside its twin development, Theatre 11, will lead to improved productivity and an increase of WWL’s capacity to reduce waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery patients.
Mr Smith said: “The new theatres 11 and 12 are bright, spacious and modern, and bring Wrightington’s theatre facilities right up to date. They are a welcome addition to the site and provide a fully functioning improvement to our orthopaedic services.”
Theatre 12 was achieved by creating a conceptual twin theatre alongside Theatre 11, effectively completing the design work for both theatres simultaneously and allowing the original scheme to be extended easily. The theatres were built using Trust capital funds and an additional £6.1m of funding through NHS England’s Targeted Investment Fund (TIF), a national programme designed to increase NHS elective and diagnostic capacity in response to the rising elective backlogs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic – a total of £9.6m.
The launch of Theatres 11 and 12 within five months of each other represents significant milestones for Wrightington, as they are the first new theatres on the site since the Wrightington Barn Theatres development in 2015.
Mary Fleming, WWL Chief Executive said: “Having two new theatres at Wrightington Hospital will enable us to efficiently and safely manage an increased number of day case surgical patients for the foreseeable future. This is fantastic news for our patients locally, across Greater Manchester (GM) and beyond. By being able to offer mutual aid for patients who have long waits in other organisations, 40% of patient activity will come in from areas across the whole of the North West, helping us to support the drive to tackle waiting times.
“A huge thank you must be given to all involved in delivering this new development. Colleagues from the site helped to move equipment into new areas over a weekend so that patient activity within the old and new areas were not affected by the change. It was a real team effort and meant that the new theatre was built and went live completely on schedule.”
The two theatres are major developments in the first two phases of Wrightington’s refreshed site development plan and further reinforce Wrightington Hospital’s Surgical Hub status, establishing WWL as the North West (NW) Centre for Orthopaedic excellence, due to the Trust’s technical expertise and resources.
Surgical Hub sites are intended to deliver a high-volume of low-complexity procedures which will be key to tackling long waiting lists. Theatres 11 and 12 have been designed specifically to focus on these kinds of procedures, such as soft tissue knee surgery and low complexity joint replacements.
Only four sites in Greater Manchester hold Surgical Hub accreditation, two of which are WWL hospitals – Wrightington Hospital and Leigh Infirmary - and is recognition that the sites work to a defined set of clinical and operational standards. The new theatres are equipped with laminar flow clean air systems which substantially reduces the risk of infection in orthopaedic surgery and can help speed up patient recovery.