The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with CFES and Getinge to make its vision of an NHS-owned decontamination super centre a reality – offering the ability to improve services within the Trust, as well as other hospitals in the London area and beyond. Louise Frampton witnessed first-hand the scale of the operation on a visit to the state-of-the-art Enfield site.
The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust has built a new 32,000 sq ft decontamination super centre, capable of reprocessing 20 million instruments and 130,000 endoscopes. The £14 million state-of-the-art facility has improved decontamination services, by replacing ageing sterile services and endoscopy reprocessing departments across three hospital sites. At the same time, the super centre is opening up new sources of revenue for the Trust, by providing decontamination for other hospitals – allowing additional funds to be reinvested back into NHS services.
The existing facilities were reaching the end of their life and investment was required to maintain a compliant service across the Trust’s three main complexes – including Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals.
“The average washer-disinfector has a life expectancy of seven years, while an autoclave has an average life span of 10 years. At Barnet, the equipment had far exceeded this and the department was having to use a collection of portable cabins. The units at Chase Farm and the Royal Free faced similar challenges, with staff working in cramped conditions,” explained general manager, Mark Sibbons
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