A new £9.4 m surgical centre that will perform around 4,000 orthopaedic procedures a year has officially opened at Central Middlesex Hospital in London’s Park Royal.
NHS London North West University Healthcare says the North-West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (EOC) will help reduce a waiting list of over 16,000 patients that has built up since the pandemic. The new facility was recently officially opened by former secondary school teacher, David Wootton, the first patient to be treated there at the start of its phased opening last December 2023 – undergoing a partial knee replacement in the morning and on his way home to Acton later the same day.
One of the first major developments of the North West London Acute Provider Collaborative, a partnership of the four acute NHS Trusts in the sector – London North West University Healthcare, Imperial College Healthcare, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and
The Hillingdon Hospitals, the centre brings together most ‘high volume, low complexity’ bone and joint procedures, such as knee and hip replacements, in north west London – an approach ‘shown to improve quality and efficiency, enabling better care for more patients, and freeing up capacity in other hospitals to focus on more complex procedures where patients need more specialist care’.
Matt Bartlett, Medical director of the centre, and an orthopaedic surgeon, said: “A similar model in south London has proven very successful. It is all about providing a faster, more equitable service. Orthopaedic procedures involving bones and joints make up more than a quarter of all NHS operations, and we are working hard to reduce waiting lists.”
Patients’ pre-operative and post-operative care will remain in their local hospitals, with surgeons moving with their patients to carry out their procedures in the dedicated Centre.
London North West University Healthcare CEO, Pippa Nightingale, added: “We need to be prepared for the future; if we did nothing, the number of people waiting for orthopaedic surgery in north west London would increase by almost a fifth by 2030. The EOC is therefore a game-changer, and will particularly benefit older patients and those from more deprived backgrounds, where musculoskeletal disorders are one of the most common long-term health conditions.”
