Synergy Health wins sterile services contract at new Royal London

Barts and the London NHS Trust has joined forces with Synergy Health to deliver sterile services at The Royal London Hospital, the UK’s largest acute healthcare centre.

A Synergy Health facility has been built on the newly-revamped hospital site and will serve the 23 on-site theatres, decontaminating and sterilising around five million surgical instruments every year. The facility will also be linked to the London Chest Hospital by lifts enabling rapid access between the two areas of the hospital, and with plans to provide services both on and off site.

The company was selected by Capital Hospitals Limited as a key delivery partner alongside Skanska, Carilion, Siemens and Varian and the deal is the continuation of a long-standing relationship which has seen Synergy Health providing sterile services to St Bartholomew and the London Chest Hospital since May 2006.

Under the contract, the trust will benefit from efficiency and quality enhancements enabled by state-of-the-art technology, equipment and specialist staff, many of whom were employed by Barts and the London NHS Trust from before services transferred to the Islington site in 2006. Training of new staff has taken up to 18 months and all hospital employees undertook training for fire safety and use of new equipment. NHS staff who transferred under TUPE included 33 technicians, five team leaders, six support staff and nine distribution staff, who joined the Synergy team to bring the full unit complement to 60. The team operates a round-the-clock on-call service to support emergencies and major incidents.

The trust’s medical director, Dr Steve Ryan, said: “Sterile services are critical to ensuring our surgeons and other healthcare professionals can rely on having the tools of their trade available through a safe, timely and traceable service and where patient safety features top of all agendas. By being located so close to our theatres, we expect the sterile services unit to be able to provide an unrivalled service to our staff and, most importantly, our patients.”

Adrian Coward, chief executive of Synergy Health for the UK and Ireland, added: “We are delighted to have been chosen as a key delivery partner to provide sterile services through our best-in-class facility at this fantastic new hospital. We continually strive for mutual success based on trust, innovation and accountability and where we are focused on the needs of the hospital to deliver the utmost patient care at the best possible cost.”

The new hospital will be fully operational by 2015.