Plans for shake-up of health care in east Dorset ahead of schedule

Watch: New facilities in Poole and Bournemouth look to reduce operation waiting times and free up ambulances

Plans for the re-organisation of health care in east Dorset are ahead of schedule, with new facilities in Poole and Bournemouth opening in Spring 2025, rather than Autumn 2026.

A huge new Emergency department will open in Bournemouth, with elected care taking place in new state of the art 'Barn' operating theatres in Poole - the only open plan operating theatre in the south of England outside London.

It means that four operations can take place at the same time in the larger space - with four more traditional new theatres on the floor below.

Andrew Ward, Manager for Theatres at University Hospitals Dorset says "Patient throughput will significantly increase in the barn theatres. Consultants finishing operating and coming into the next operating room which is already. We call these super lists.

"We could be operating up to and possibly over one hundred joints a week of knees and hips."   

Using larger spaces for operations will have a huge impact on waiting lists - which are currently six months for orthopaedics.

Dr Chris Rowley, Consultant Anaesthetist said: "We know from other centres that efficiency is improved by forty per cent - it drives down costs.

"Every minute we are in theatre it costs thirty pounds a minute. So the more patients we can get though in that time frame the better."

The building work at Bournemouth hospital is also ahead of schedule.

The new emergency department will be nearly double the size of Bournemouth and Poole put together at the moment - above that is critical care and antennal.

Then the maternity floors with maternity theatres, post-natal beds and the paediatric floor on the top level.

Over the years there have been protests against the loss of the emergency department at Poole - with most people concerned about longer ambulance journey times to Bournemouth from the Purbecks.

But the hospital trust says the new system will free up ambulances which now won't be making the thousands of patient transfer trips between the two hospitals every year.

And as well as the planned care at Poole hospital, there there will also be a new smaller urgent treatment centre.