Orthopaedics hub

A hospital in Peasedown St John is set to become a hub for orthopaedics operations in the South West, able to operate on 1,500 joints a year.

Bath’s Royal United Hospital bought private hospital Circle Bath in 2021, renaming it Sulis Hospital. Now Paul Doyle, transformation director of Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon, and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board’s elective care programme, has told Bath and North East Somerset Council that the facility will become a hub for elective surgery in the South West.

He told the council’s children, adults, health and wellbeing policy development and scrutiny panel: “It currently does a combination of private treatments but also increasingly an amount of NHS work, and what we have been successful in doing is securing some national funding to extend that facility and convert it into an elective orthopaedic centre. So part of it will be focused solely on doing orthopaedic work: so hips, knees, shoulders, other joints.”

Two new modular theatres will be built at the hospital, bringing the total number up to six, and allowing the hospital to carry out about 1,500 joint operations a year. One temporary additional theatre is currently running at the site

Mr Doyle said the facility should be operating from June 2024.