New ops facility for hospital

The £6m centre will provide two extra operating theatres, three more consultants and a 30-bed ward.

It will be situated on top of the existing Springfield Unit as a second- floor extension.

A hospital spokesman said: "This is another vital step in in one of the trust's key priority areas - reducing the length of time patients have to wait for orthopaedic surgery.

"The new facility will allow the trust to carry out a much more extensive range of elective operations without the threat of beds set aside for orthopaedic patients having to be used for emergency admission because all other beds were full."

Hospital bosses hope that building will start in January 2005, and the unit should open a year later. It will also house a post-operative care facility and some additional outpatient space.

The new centre will have a working life of just six to ten years. But NHS bosses are spending so much buying operations from other hospitals to keep waiting-lists inside 18 months that the new building should pay for itself in four years.

It will provide the capacity for around 1,500 more treatments and 3,000 more outpatient appointments a year. Plans to put the centre in a car park were scrapped.

Glyn Griffiths, Gwent Healthcare Trust's general manager for surgery, told the Argus: "Most NHS building projects have a lifespan of 25-60 years, but there are plans coming together to completely reshape hospital services in Gwent, which means we have never seen this as anything other than a stopgap for six to ten years.

"But it will save £160,000 a month, which is what we pay other providers to help meet demand for orthopaedics in Gwent, so it will pay for itself very quickly.

"The aim is to continue major orthopaedic work, like hip and knee replacements and spinal surgery, at the Royal Gwent, and intermediate stuff at St Woolos.

"But the two theatres at St Woolos are versatile enough to do any type of orthopaedic surgery."