DORSET COUNTY HOSPITAL

'Dorset County Hospital' is an NHS district general hospital in the town of Dorchester, Dorset, England and is operated by West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust. The hospital is the hub of the district's inpatient facilities but community hospitals, owned by the North and South West Dorset Primary Care Groups are situated in the surrounding major towns and provide the 'spokes' to the central unit. Dorset County Hospital has 500 beds.

Contents

Opening

Future developments

Services

Emergency and medical services

Planned and surgical services

Family services

Diagnostic services

References

External links

Opening

The hospital's origins began many years before it became the official Dorset County Hospital, but with a much smaller operation and set of buildings. It originally opened as 'West Dorset County Hospital' and was built with distinctive red and blue decorated buildings. These can still be seen today. The later buildings, completed in 1998 have white decoration.
The hospital was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen on 8 May, 1998 and marked the end of a long-term project to
develop a new District General Hospital in the West Dorset area and the centralisation of all services for acutely ill patients into a modern hospital on one site, approximately 1 mile from the town centre. The original Dorchester Hospital was a strain on resources for the area and subsequently closed in 1998.
In the ''Sunday Times'' Good Hospital Guide 2004, West Dorset's patient satisfaction rating is bettered by only one trust in England^[1] and it scores well with respect to most of the other performance indicators. The mortality rate is 8% below the expected level and is among the best 30 nationally. The trust is just one of five in England where all inpatients are admitted within six months of referral and the proportion of outpatients seen by a consultant within 13 weeks of referral is among the 30 highest. The trusts facilities are also very clean: it is ranked in the top ten in England for the high standards of cleanliness in the A&E department and in outpatients' toilets.^[1]
In 2005 the hospital was awarded three-star status in the NHS's performance ratings^[3].

Future developments

Work has begun on a new £2m cardiac unit that will provide services such as cardiac catheterisation, which means that patients will no longer have to be transferred to Southampton General Hospital for this procedure. Other future plans for the hospital include the creation of a sensory room with lights, music and textured surfaces to stimulate young patients in Digby Court, the Trust's residential centre for children with complex learning disabilities. Improvements have also been made to the environment in Hardy Ward, the Stroke Unit.

Services

The Trust's clinical services are organised into four directorates and provide the following services centralised on the Dorset County Hospital Site.

Emergency and medical services

★ A & E

★ Elderly Care

★ General Medical Wards, Units and Specialities

★ Neurology

★ Dermatology

★ Critical care (ITU, HDU, CCU)

★ Renal (county-wide service)

★ Clinical haematology

★ Neurophysiology

Planned and surgical services

★ Anaesthetics

★ Day surgery

★ Urology

★ Ophthalmology

★ ENT

★ Outpatient (DCH & Weymouth)

★ Theatres

★ Trauma and orthopaedics

★ Rheumatology

★ General surgery

Family services

★ Child health

★ Gynaecology

★ Maternity

★ Oral, orthodontic & dental services

★ Genitourinary medicine

Diagnostic services

★ Pathology and haematology

★ Medical physics

★ Diagnostic imaging including spiral CT, MRI and nuclear medicine
The hospital is also recognised as a cancer unit for the provision of services for patients with gynaecological, breast, colorectal, urological, upper gastrointestinal, lung and haematological malignancies. While most chemotherapy is given locally, the radiotherapy centre is in the Cancer Centre at Poole.

References

1. West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust
2. West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust
3. Healthcare Commission ratings

External links

★ West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust website