Work well underway on £8million healthcare sterilisation facility in Northumberland

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s centralised sterilisation service department (CSSD) is being built next to its emergency hospital in Cramlington.

The two-storey, bespoke, carbon-neutral facility, which is due to be completed by early next year, will have the ability to disinfect and sterilise more than half-a-million pieces of medical equipment a year, including trolleys and beds.

It will replace and centralise the trust’s two sterilisation departments currently located at Wansbeck and North Tyneside hospitals, which were built more than 30 years ago and sterilise 300,000 pieces of medical equipment annually.

An update to the Northumbria Healthcare’s board meeting on Thursday, July 23, noted that they ‘are ageing, regularly malfunction and are at risk of catastrophic failure so much so that the current service is rated as a very high risk on the trust’s risk register’.

Northumbria Healthcare Facilities Management project director, Owen Cusack, said: “Ensuring the medical equipment used in our hospitals is sterilised and safe to use by our clinicians in many departments ranging from theatres and A&E to the podiatry and dental services is critical.

“This investment further demonstrates our commitment to providing excellent quality care, while building patient confidence, and to being at the forefront of healthcare in our region and further afield.

“The new CSSD will support our ongoing programme of work to drive down carbon emissions and will be powered by green electricity.

“It will also be more efficient than our current sterilisation department due to faster cleaning cycles.”

Planning permission was granted in May, with work starting later that same month, after Cramlington-based Merit Holdings Ltd was awarded the building contract.

Merit is a specialist in zero-carbon design and in manufacturing pre-assembled sections of buildings which are then transported to site for rapid assembly; 90% of this project will be completed off-site, reducing construction time and cost.

Matt McGrady, finance director at Merit, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen to deliver such an important facility to support the delivery of patient care.

“We will work with our embedded supply-chain partners, 75% of whom are North East-based, to ensure that the project is delivered to the highest quality, on time and within budget.”

The board meeting heard that the trust is looking to establish an ongoing partnership with Merit to look at providing similar facilities elsewhere in the country.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers and consequently the advertising that we receive. We are now more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news by buying a copy of our newspaper.

If you can, please do pick up a copy when you are at the shops. Thank you for your support.