Homerton Hospital’s new Essential Services Laboratory was opened this week by Chief Executive Louise Ashley and Chair Sir John Gieve in a ribbon cutting ceremony.
The new laboratory replaces ageing facilities at the hospital in the London Borough of Hackney and is part of the innovative pathology arrangements run by NHS East and South East London Pathology Partnership on behalf of Homerton Healthcare, Barts Health and Lewisham and Greenwich NHS trusts. The Pathology Partnership is jointly owned by the three trusts.
Pictured above are: (left to right) David Monk, the Partnership’s Independent Chair, Louise Ashley, Sir John Gieve and Andrew Knott, the Partnership’s Managing Director.
The Essential Services Laboratory concentrates on urgent tests requiring a quick turnaround in areas such as the hospital’s Emergency Department and specialist areas such as ICU, children’s intensive care and maternity.
Sir John said: “We have been through much effort to get to this point but we now have superb new pathology facilities just across the corridor to the Emergency Department and supporting other key clinical areas in our hospital.”
Andrew Knott, managing director of NHS East and South East London Pathology Partnership said: “Pathology plays an essential role in approximately 70% of patient pathways. The creation of a shared network for pathology across east and south east London reflects the wider NHS national pathology strategy to meet the changing needs of patients and to be able to take full advantage of developments in new testing technology.”
The Homerton ESL laboratory has been rebuilt and re-equipped with new analytical equipment to provide urgent and time-critical tests for patients at Homerton Hospital. This work has been part of a two-year upgrade programme to modernise the laboratory for the benefit of patients.
A key part of the programme is also that the laboratory has had a major IT upgrade and now the Homerton laboratory and its analysers are part of a pathology network currently linking together Homerton’s laboratory to four other pathology laboratories in north east London, including a central hub laboratory at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel which already processes routine and specialist tests for the network, including patients in City and Hackney.
The new laboratory, analytical equipment and IT system will improve reliability and the quality of testing for patients and is part of an NHS-wide initiative to standardise testing and use the network to enable the increased use of automation to process high volumes of non-urgent tests, whilst improving patient access to more complex tests.