A new ‘elective surgery hub’ was unveiled at King George Hospital last week – one of eight nationally-accredited surgeries recognised for meeting ‘top clinical standards’. The £14m expansion will introduce new high-tech equipment for doctors, allowing them to perform surgeries via remote-controlled robotic arms, and double the number of recovery beds. Surgeons will cover a variety of fields, from orthopaedic surgery to soft tissue work.
Of the 68,000 patients on the waiting list, 6,000 require inpatient surgery, according to Barking, Havering, Redbridge University NHS Trust (BHRUT) chief executive Matthew Trainer. He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “A hundred more surgeries a week, in that context, is pretty significant.” MORE NEWS: CCTV shows masked men steal truck A major bonus of the new theatres is that they are more comfortable for patients, he said.
He described the sleeker theatres as “beautiful and bright,” compared to some of the “older and darker” rooms elsewhere in the hospital. He added that, while the trust had been successful in reducing its longest waiting times, it still found itself struggling to “keep pace with demand”. He said: “Since the pandemic, we’ve seen the amount of emergency surgery we do increase significantly.
A lot of the theatres we used for planned care, we’re now having to use for emergencies such as caesarean sections, and that’s put pressure on the capacity we have for other operations.�.