Our state-of-the-art Decontamination Unit at King George Hospital (KGH) was officially opened today (Thursday 1 February) and was labelled a ‘game changer’ for patients and staff.

It will provide a much more reliable, efficient and sustainable service that will help reduce the waits some patients face for certain procedures and improve patient care and safety across our sites.

The new unit thoroughly cleans and sterilises all medical devices and instruments used in procedures so they can be reused again safely.

Each year, our decontamination team will deal with more than 60,000 medical devices at this enhanced facility.

The service will be used for endoscopy, respiratory, urology and GI surgeries and will also help clean equipment used at Barking Community Hospital (BCH). It represents a major upgrade of the old decontamination facilities and means a number of areas in the hospital can now be repurposed for patient care.

Other improvements at KGH include a £14m investment in our Elective Surgical Hub and the opening, in the coming months, of two more theatres that will allow us to carry out 100 additional operations every week.

Members of the Royal College of Surgeons for England (RCS) attended the opening includingTim Mitchell, their President. Watch the moment below when Tim and a member of our decontamination team cut the ribbon to the unit.

Commenting on the opening, Sas Banerjee, one of our colorectal surgeons who’s also London Endoscopy Clinical Director, said:

Our new unit is a massive upgrade on what we had before. It is the cornerstone of all endoscopy activity (Respiratory, Gastrointestinal & Urology) and we are grateful to our decontamination colleagues for the work they do to support the care we provide.

The unit is like two new kidneys that will allow our work at KGH and the endoscopy activity at the BCH Community Diagnostic Centre to proceed  efficiently and reliably.

Russell Snellgrove, Decontamination Manager, added:

Our staff now have a reliable decontamination unit that future-proofs our endoscopy performance. We’re all excited about the positive impact it will have on our work.

During their time at our Trust, the team from the Royal College of Surgeons also attended a roundtable meeting with our senior leaders where the topics under discussion included the work we’re doing to tackle violence and aggression.