The Horder Centre

Horder Healthcare is the provider for The Horder Centre (THC), an independent provider of surgery and outpatient services. 

The centre mainly undertakes elective orthopaedic procedures and a small amount of procedures for the relief of pain, for example epidurals (a pain relieving medicine injected into the back).

The centre undertakes a variety of orthopaedic operations including, hip replacements, knee replacements, foot surgery, ankle surgery, shoulder surgery and hand surgery.

Surgery is only performed on patients aged 18 years and over.

There were 5,456 inpatient and day case episodes of care recorded at the centre between October 2015 and September 2016, of these 94% were NHS funded and 6% were other funded.

Forty five percent of all NHS funded patients and 55% of all other funded patients stayed overnight at the hospital during the same reporting period.

The most common procedure undertaken in this period was major hip procedure, which accounted for 17% of all procedures. Major knee procedure was the second most commonly performed procedure and accounted for 13% of all procedures.

There are 42 single inpatient bedrooms with en-suite facilities, a gym for patient use, a discharge lounge and three pre-assessment rooms.

There are three laminar flow theatres (a system that circulates filtered air to reduce the risk of airborne contamination) with a recovery area and a separate 16 bed day care unit.

There is also a therapy garden, which has been developed for the use of patients.

In addition, there is a theatre sterile supply unit (TSSU) that is also located alongside the theatres. This is used to clean and sterilise all the hospital’s surgical instruments.

The diagnostic imaging services is managed by Medical Imaging Partnership (MIP) a separate company, under a service level agreement (SLA) and therefore not included as part of this inspection.

The outpatient department had 17,167 total attendances in the period October 2015 to September 2016, which is an average of 1,406 a month. The majority of appointments were funded through the NHS accounting for 98% with the other 2% being insured or self-funded.

Referrals are accepted for the outpatient and diagnostic imaging departments for adults above the age of 18 only. The outpatient department had six consulting rooms and one treatment room. The physiotherapy department had five clinical rooms, four curtained cubicles and a gym/studio space over two floors. There were also three pre-assessment consultation rooms and a large room used for ‘Joint School.’

The outpatient physiotherapy service operated between 8am and 8pm Monday to Thursday, 8am to 6pm on Fridays and 8am to 12:30pm on Saturdays.

The outpatient facilities focussed on elective care with defined operational hours. The department opens from 7:30am to 6:30pm Monday to Friday. These hours were extended as and when required. The outpatient service specialises in orthopaedics, accounting for 88.1% patients. Pain and rheumatology patients accounted for the other 11.99%.

We visited all clinical areas during our inspection. We spoke with and observed the care given by more than 34 members of staff including nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, administrative staff and the executive team. We spoke with ten patients and received five patient comment cards with feedback from patients who had received care at the hospital. We reviewed 15 sets of patient records and a variety of data for example, meeting minutes, policies and performance data.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 17th January 2017.