ALL planned, routine surgery is to be moved from Warrington Hospital and transferred to Halton General.
The move will complete the gradual transfer of routine surgery to Halton which has been ongoing for several years.
It will allow the larger Warrington Hospital in Lovely Lane to focus on emergency, complex and specialist care.
It should mean there is less chance of routine operations being cancelled due to emergency pressures.
A spokesman for Warrington and Halton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “We run both hospital sites and over recent years have undertaken more of the planned, routine surgery at Halton General Hospital.
“It’s been part of a planned strategy to provide a better service for patients and allowing the larger Warrington Hospital to focus on specialist, complex and emergency work.
“All emergency and more complex planned surgery will still take place at Warrington – including planned operations where the patient may require more follow up care, they have underlying health conditions or might need intensive or higher dependency care post-surgery.”
The spokesman said the majority of planned routine surgery already took place at Halton for patients from across Warrington and Halton. The trust was now also providing more general surgery, urology, and gynaecology operations at Halton General as part of the plan.
“Splitting emergency and routine surgery work allows the hospitals to make best use of their sites and is a model that many NHS trusts who work over two sites use. For the patient it means that there is less risk of a routine operation being cancelled due to emergency pressures.”
