£1million surgery costs

2 operating theatres are closed at Torbay Hospital

Patients due for operations have been treated at other locations including the private Mount Stuart Hospital in Torquay and Plymouth Nuffield.

The hospital trust praised the response of staff and said the total cost of plans to cope with the effect of the closures is expected to be around £1m by the end of March.

Details emerged after a union questioned whether NHS staff were still insured if they were working in a private hospital.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said it was voluntary for staff to work at Mount Stuart Hospital and confirmed they were covered by insurance.

Two of the 10 operating theatres were closed at Torbay Hospital in November due to the failure of an air handling unit.

Repairs and upgrades are expected to cost £1.8m and the theatres are due to reopen in June.

Torbay GMB branch secretary Paul Raybould said union members had been advised not to agree to work in the private Mount Stuart Hospital, part of Ramsay Health Care, until the insurance issue had been clarified.

Mr Raybould said: “Questions have been raised by GMB as to how the closed theatres were allowed to deteriorate to such an extent as to be closed.”

A statement from the trust said it had “put in place contingency plans to ensure as many people as possible have their surgery as planned.

“We are prioritising those in greatest clinical need and those who have been waiting the longest.

“Our staff have been phenomenal in their response – working extra hours at weekends and staffing extra sessions in our day surgery theatres.

“Our plans also include offering people their operations at other providers, including Mount Stuart and the Plymouth Nuffield.

“We have an agreement with Mount Stuart for our own staff teams to operate on our patients in their theatres when they are not in use.

“As with all of our contingency plans, staff are taking part in this initiative on a voluntary basis and are fully insured.

“Our staffside union representatives have been fully involved in all the detailed planning and are supportive of the arrangements in place.

“We expect to spend around £1m by the end of March (at normal NHS tariff costs) for patients to have their surgery at other sites.

“The closure of these theatres has mainly impacted on orthopaedic patients, with a few general surgery procedures also affected.  

“We offer our sincere apologies to anyone who has had their surgery postponed or who has had to wait longer than we would have liked for their planned operation.

“ We are doing all that we can to maintain our operating capacity in very challenging circumstances.”

Torbay and South Devon appeared in 19th place in a list of trusts in England with the longest waiting times in December, worsening from 26th in November, according to an article published on the Health Service Journal website.

The target for referral to treatment is 18 weeks, but figures for Torbay show 92% of the waiting list was seen within 27 weeks.