New £9.4m surgery centre to cut 16,000-long waiting list opens in North West London

A new multi-million pound surgical centre that will perform around 4,000 orthopaedic procedures a year officially opened in North London last week. The NHS Trust has said it will help to reduce the 16,000 strong waiting list that has built up since the pandemic.

The £9.4m North-West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Park Royal opened last week (May 13), with the goal of cutting patient waiting times in Brent and the surrounding area. The opening was attended by local politicians, including Brent MPs Dawn Butler and Barry Gardiner.

The centre is designed for routine inpatient orthopaedic surgery for the whole of the North-west London area. This will be for high volume albeit low complexity bone and joint procedures, such as knee and hip replacements, performed in three new operating theatres - which will eventually expand to five.

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This approach has been 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, according to the London North-west NHS Trust.

Barry Gardiner MP congratulated the team and believes it will help to ‘reduce the number of cancelled operations’ for residents. Dawn Butler MP said the new facility will ‘have a massive impact’ in terms of quality of life for those receiving surgery at the centre.

Brent councillor and chair of the North West London Joint Health Committee, Ketan Sheth, called it ‘an honour’ to be invited to take part in the official opening and claimed he is already hearing positive stories about early procedures at the centre.

He said: “The elective orthopaedic centre is a great example of what can be achieved by different parts of the healthcare system working together. We had a situation where there were long waiting lists for orthopaedic procedures in our hospitals, and that had grown significantly during the pandemic."

He added: “By bringing together all the expertise and clinical resources under one roof — all of our hospitals working together for the benefit of patients — we know that our residents will be seen quicker and the waiting times are reduced.“

The centre is 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.

Medical Director of the centre and an orthopaedic surgeon, Matt Bartlett, said: “A similar model in south London has proved 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.”

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 [centre] 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."

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