Pathology services south of the Tyne have undergone a multimillion-pound transformation that has seen one company’s expertise in coagulation at the heart of a successful reorganisation of services across three hospitals.
Stago‘s expertise in coagulation has been chosen to be part of a fundamental reorganisation of pathology services in the north-east, which has set a template for NHS hospital innovation when tasked with implementing change. The outcome is a new £12 million pathology hub at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, part of the Gateshead Health NHS Trust. The hospital has always been in the vanguard of NHS innovation, being one of the first in the country to obtain trust status, 10 years ago.
Since the laboratory opened in June 2014, clinical teams from China, Israel, Australia, Germany, the USA and Middle East have been visiting, to see creative pathology thinking in practice. Chris Charlton, overall pathology manager, confirmed: “We have been able to showcase how bringing expertise under one roof and using the very latest in specialist technology for pathology has huge benefits for patients in this part of the north-east. Our specialist equipment is so cutting-edge that we’re the only site in the UK to have some of these analysers in operation.”
The new pathology service was formed as the result of widely-spread pathology services in South Tyneside, Sunderland’s City Hospital and Gateshead being standardised across the three sites. This harmonisation has not only involved hardware, reagents and IT, but staff retrained to multitask and be ready to work across the three sites. Queen Elizabeth, Gateshead, is the central hub, with smaller acute laboratories maintained at the other hospitals.
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