New Surgical Centre for Victoria Infirmary Northwich
Centre will take patients from Cheshire and Merseyside regions
Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has received £18.2m of funding from NHS England, via NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board, to create a new surgical day centre.
The Cheshire & Merseyside Surgical Centre at Victoria Infirmary will provide a range of state-of-the-art clinical areas to support patient care. These include two advanced operating theatres, one dedicated to cataract surgery and the other functioning as a multi-specialty theatre accommodating orthopaedics, ENT, dermatology, general surgery, and pain management. There will also be a treatment room, recovery area and consulting rooms.
Our ambition is to treat a large number of ‘high volume low complexity’ patients from across the region who require less complex operations and procedures.
This will help reduce waiting times for patients, with an immediate focus on those who have been waiting 52 weeks for treatment. We also aim to reduce the overall backlog.
The centre is scheduled to open in spring 2025 and will treat around 12,000 patients each year.
The historic Verdin Ward, located on the same site, will be fully refurbished as part of the development.
A landscape architect has been involved with the development from the outset, which will ensure there is a biodiversity net gain for the site upon completion of the overall project. This will be achieved through a combination of replanting trees, shrubs and soft and hard landscaping.
Centre of excellence
Our ambition is that the new Cheshire & Merseyside Surgical Centre at Victoria Infirmary will become a cataract centre of excellence, providing eye care for the people across the region. This will mean there will be fewer people waiting for eye surgery across the region, as well as greatly improving patient care.
Recruitment
We are looking to recruit around 80 people to fill both full and part time positions. For the theatres, the Trust will be recruiting nurses, operating department practitioners, as well as support roles.
In ophthalmology, the Trust is recruiting health care assistants, pre-operative assessment care nurses, telephone triage nurses, and imaging technicians. Meanwhile, for the waiting area, the centre needs senior nurses, nurses, and health care assistants.
Other roles include C-arm trained radiographers, pharmacy assistants, security and porters, along with medical engineers, estates and IT support, and domestic and administration staff.
Visit the surgical centre recruitment page for further information about jobs.
Regional commitment to excellence
The development of the Cheshire & Merseyside Surgical Centre at Victoria Infirmary is part of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s long-term strategy.
This includes a commitment to improving population health and healthcare, and building a strong and sustainable NHS provider sector that delivers services, which offer consistently high levels of access and quality, as outlined in its 2023-2028 Cheshire and Merseyside Joint Forward Plan.
The plan also highlights a programme of radical transformation across the health and care system to address longstanding issues of inequalities in outcomes, as well as and financial sustainability.
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