Minister for Health, the Hon Albert Isola MP has opened a fifth operating theatre at St Bernard’s Hospital.

This new operating theatre will be dedicated to trauma and emergency procedures so that other theatres can operate more efficiently without interruption. This means that the GHA can continue to increase planned surgical procedures and reduce waiting times, as there will now be almost no cancellations resulting from emergency theatre use.

As part of the new surgical strategy, this extra capacity will make it possible to have an uninterrupted orthopaedic list running every day of the week and help reduce waiting lists substantially. The new arrangement provides the capacity for up to 50% increase in orthopaedic surgery facilitating faster access to patients awaiting surgery. In addition, the extra theatre reduces pressure on the current day surgery unit theatre, moving plastic surgery and urology into the main theatre which will result in increasing both theatre time and space available. These changes will also help improve the quality of care provided alongside surgical procedures for example cancer pathways and increase operating time for breast and urology surgery.

GHA Director General, Patrick Geoghegan OBE said: “The GHA is committed to continuing to improve service delivery as part of our Reset, Restart, Recover transformation programme. We listened to people’s concerns in relation to our waiting times and this additional operating theatre is aimed at taking action to increase capacity and improve our patient experience to help address these concerns”.

Minister for Health, the Hon Albert Isola MP said: “I would like to take the opportunity to thank the GHA Executive for the delivery of this new operating theatre. This will substantially reduce our surgical waiting lists and add greater flexibility when scheduling elective procedures. This is great news for our patients and community as we strive to improve the speed and quality of our services.”