Institute President Ian Sturdgess recently attended the launch of South West London Pathology’s new state-of-the-art laboratories at St George’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Ian was invited along with guests from South West London Pathology (SWLP) staff, hospital trusts, NHS England, the Medical Director for London Region, local GPs and CCG colleagues, and representatives from commercial companies.
Ian said: "I was delighted and honoured to open the new laboratories at South West London Pathology. It will provide a high-quality and advanced service to London and is an example of how our profession transforms and delivers on NHS modernisation and innovation.I was very impressed by the facilities and all the staff involved."
Three NHS trusts (Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) collaborated to deliver a single, integrated NHS-led pathology service called South West London Pathology (SWLP). The service covers 3.5 million people across South West London, three hospitals, 200 GP practices and 30 healthcare centres.
South West London Pathology is a successful result of NHS London’s Modernising Pathology Programme, led by Dr Andy Mitchell, in which London trusts were arranged into five clusters and asked to develop business cases for partnership working for pathology services.
South West London Pathology has been one of the UK’s fastest pathology service redesigns, with the integrated solution only starting in January 2014 and going live in December 2015. Using a best-practice ‘hub and spoke’ delivery model, the integrated system maximises the efficiency, safety, quality and cost of pathology services.
The new hub and spoke system saw the pathology laboratory at St George's University Hospital refurbished and expanded to become the central hub for the majority of tests, with Croydon and Kingston retaining ‘hot labs’ onsite for emergency tests. South West London Pathology has shared the knowledge and experience learned from the new operations with healthcare providers from the UK (including NHS hospitals), Europe, China and Australia.
