New £48 million National Treatment Centre in Inverness 'will help cut waiting lists', says NHS Highland chief
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REDUCED NHS waiting times in the Highlands will be one of the big benefits to come from the opening of a new £48 million treatment centre in Inverness, health chiefs have said.
NHS Highland CEO Pam Dudek made the claim as the new National Treatment Centre in the Inverness Campus gears up to welcome its first patients next month.
The centre will host NHS Highland’s entire eye care service, including surgical and outpatient facilities, and will also deliver a range of elective orthopaedic care, offering hip and knee replacements, foot, ankle and hand surgery.
Once up to full operation the site will be able to treat more than 900 outpatients every week.
Related: PICTURES: New NHS National Treatment Centre in Inverness prepares to open doors
It will also offer 24 patient beds, five operating theatres and 13 consulting rooms.
And Ms Dudek is confident that patients will begin to notice a fall in waiting times for NHS services once in the months after the centre welcomes its first patient in mid-April.
Speaking to The Inverness Courier, she said: "We absolutely are looking for this to reduce our waiting times. Obviously we had quite a build up [in waiting times during the pandemic], just the same as other health boards, and so that will take us a bit of time to get into that, but then hopefully we will get to a much more smoothed out set of circumstances where people are coming through as they should be, though that will take time.
She added that such improvements were likely to be seen "more quickly" in the health board's eye care services than in orthopaedics but that this was "not unusual and consistent with other boards".
