16 June 2009: Nuffield Health, the UK’s leading healthcare charity, has completed the final phase of a £27m investment programme in its hospital decontamination services, on time and on budget.
From 22 June the Nuffield Health Wessex Hospital will be supplied with decontamination services by a brand new facility in Eastleigh — the final unit to be completed in a national network of six state-of-the-art Hospital Sterile Service Units (HSSUs) that the charity has opened over the past two years.
The other five HSSUs are in Cambridge, Stoke on Trent, Tiverton, Warwick and Wetherby. All six HSSUs have gained accreditation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to the standards required to be compliant with the European Medical Devices Directive (EC93/42).
With the addition of the Wessex Hospital to the HSSU network, all Nuffield Health’s hospitals are now served by sterile services that are fully compliant with the high standards required by the European Directive.
Dr Andy Jones, Group Medical Director, Nuffield Health says: “Nuffield Health’s goal is to constantly improve the quality, cleanliness and safety of its patient care. We started this programme of investment four years ago as we believed that no other suitable solution existed to achieving the required standards for patient safety.
“To date, these units have reduced ‘defect rates’ to about half that of the accepted national average and also reduced other problems that can be caused by sterilisation or decontamination issues. I am really proud of all the planning and hard work that the Nuffield Health team have put into completing this programme — they are held in high regard not just by the Consultants and staff using the HSSU service but by the industry as a whole.”
The HSSUs work to a ‘hub and spoke’ model and have the capability and capacity to provide decontamination services not only to the Nuffield Health hospitals but also to other primary and secondary care providers in the private and public sector including GP surgeries and dental practices. It is already known that in 2009 they will supply a total of 450,000 surgical instrument trays or 13 million instruments to Nuffield Health and other providers.
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