Independent hospitals to support elective care

Five independent hospitals are supporting NHS Scotland with elective care from this week, to ensure clinically urgent patients can continue to be seen and treated.

This additional support comes on top of the extra capacity already being provided by NHS Golden Jubilee and NHS Louisa Jordan for a number of elective treatments and outpatient appointments.

Following arrangements set out in the NHS Winter Preparedness Plan, the private sector hospitals will primarily support planned urgent care and cancer treatment, including breast surgery, urology, and gynaecology.

This will allow those who require planned urgent elective care to continue to be seen and treated, enabling health boards to concentrate on the front line response to COVID-19 and A&E services.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said:

“The additional capacity provided by the independent sector, NHS Golden Jubilee and NHS Louisa Jordan is very welcome, and I am extremely grateful to all staff involved for their continued hard work.

“The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with Health Boards to ensure those requiring urgent elective and vital cancer care can be seen as quickly and safely as possible.

“Even as we expand our vaccination and testing programmes, the number of COVID patients within our hospitals remains very high – so it is absolutely vital that people continue to stay home, protect the NHS, and save lives.”

Background:

NHS Winter Preparedness Plan 2020-21

As of Monday 18 January, the independent hospitals that will support NHS capacity are:

• Albyn             NHS Grampian
• Kings Park     NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Tayside
• Nuffield          NHS Lanarkshire
• Spire              NHS Lothian
• Ross Hall       NHS Ayrshire & Arran, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

More than 10,000 procedures have been performed at NHS Golden Jubilee since services recommenced in July, across orthopaedics, ophthalmology, heart and lung surgery, endoscopy and diagnostic imaging, including:

• Over 5,000 cardiothoracic and cardiology procedures – both planned and emergency
• 1,516 orthopaedic patients
• 2,114 ophthalmology patients (cataracts)
• 1422 endoscopies
• In addition, the recently opened NHS Golden Jubilee Eye Centre will perform more than 18,000 procedures each year

NHS Golden Jubilee has also carried out 565 urgent cancer operations to support the NHSScotland recovery plan.

NHS Louisa Jordan has been working with four NHS Boards to provide over 19,000 outpatient appointments across 14 specialties. These include orthopaedics, diagnostic imaging such as CT scanning and general x-ray, dermatology, oral medicine, plastics, rheumatology, breast clinics and occupational health services.

Over 19,000 NHS and social care staff have been vaccinated at the site, including 5,000 on Saturday.

Over 5,200 individuals from NHS Boards, the Royal College, Universities and Colleges have also been trained using the healthcare facilities and simulations on site.