“I’ve never been inside a more space-age theatre in all my life. It’s probably the best theatre we have in Wales for eye care.” Gwyn Williams, Consultant Ophthalmologist, Swansea Bay University Health Board.
Swansea Bay University Health Board partnered with ModuleCo to deliver a new modular ophthalmic operating theatre suite at Singleton Hospital, taking the Health Board a step closer to fulfilling its ambition for the Hospital to become a centre of excellence for ophthalmology. The new theatre suite was built as an extension to the existing Day Surgery Unit at the Hospital, which was also provided by ModuleCo’s team back in 2005.
With a total footprint of 192m2, the state-of-the-art operating theatre suite featured a 64m2 ophthalmic operating room with integral 3-person scrub, supported by an anaesthetic room, lay up prep room and dirty utilities, alongside an office and storage facilities.
The facility marks a key milestone in the Health Board’s ‘Changing for the Future’ program, which promotes health services being delivered in an improved and more efficient way.
Jan Worthing, Singleton Hospital Director, said: “The reduction in theatre capacity as a result of COVID severely impacted all surgical specialties, but particularly ophthalmology due to the high numbers of patients affected. In addition, there are about 2,100 cataract patients waiting more than 26 weeks to be seen as an outpatient, and around 80 per cent of these are likely to need surgery.”
At the time there were approximately 2,500 patients waiting for eye surgery, with around 1,700 of these having waited longer than the 36-week target. Our team handed the finished facility over in May 2022 and received high praise from Hospital staff.
Consultant Ophthalmologist, Gwyn Williams, is one of the surgeons working in the new theatre and noted: “It’s like a cathedral to ophthalmology in a way. It’s large and shiny with all the latest equipment. Everything is new. I’ve never been inside a more space-age theatre in all my life. It’s probably the best theatre we have in Wales for eye care.”
The new facility created capacity for approximately 200 additional ophthalmology cases to be processed each month.It was the first in the plan for a series of 7 brand new operating theatre suites of different specialisms at Singleton and Neath Port Talbot Hospitals as part of the ‘Changing for the Future’ program.