Major decontamination centre opens

The recently completed Pan- Birmingham Decontamination Project (PBDP) is the first collaboration in the National Decontamination Programme – it is a new joint venture service model with the private sector. It will ultimately see two brand new, state-of-the-art facilities, provided in Birmingham, run by BBraun Sterilog Ltd, to clean, sterilise and re-process surgical instruments.

Following concerns over healthcare acquired infection (HAI), vCJD and broader issues of infection control within the NHS, the Department of Health carried out Decontamination Audits in 2000. The Pan-Birmingham group undertook preliminary work to establish the feasibility of such a project and was in the first wave of the National Decontamination Programme which was launched in June 2003. The Programme recommended that, by 2007, NHS Trusts should have robust plans in place to provide sterile services from accredited facilities that comply with the requirements of the European Medical Devices Directive.

The project embarked on a robust procurement process to identify a Services Provider capable of providing this service, while also promoting staff welfare and training and encouraging technical innovation. Over the last four years, more than 140 NHS staff across the collaborating Trusts have been involved in evaluating and selecting BBraun Sterilog as the services provider, from an original list of 10 interested companies.

The National Decontamination Programme’s commercial director, Chris O’Boyle, said, “The Pan-Birmingham Project is the first of many of these joint ventures to open for business. The joint venture offers NHS hospitals a good value way of securing modern, improved sterile services now and for the future.”

BBraun Sterilog is investing more than £10 million in the Birmingham facilities, which will be equipped to the highest standards, utilising the latest processing technologies and IT systems to provide complete traceability of instrument sets through the decontamination process. A second facility, based in Yardley Green, Birmingham, is currently undergoing refurbishment and will open later this year. Between them, the two units will process more than one million instrument sets and supplementary items per year, providing services to operating theatres, wards and departments at the seven NHS Trusts in the Pan-Birmingham collaboration, as well as to the wider community-based NHS and healthcare organisations.