Budget 2024: NHS Trust ‘hopes’ for surgical funding after £1.5bn budget pledge

Hopes Wycombe Hospital will be given more funding have been given a boost after the government published its Autumn budget.

The hospital has been touted as a potential target of the £1.5 billion pot to strengthen surgical capacity across the country, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves mentioned in her statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday.

The money could be used to further improve facilities at Wycombe Hospital, according to Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust’s chief medical officer Andrew McLaren.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “Although Wycombe Hospital has not directly been identified for funding from the £1.5billion set out in the government’s budget today, following the hospital’s successful accreditation as an elective surgical hub, the Trust hopes to receive funding to establish the site as a centre of surgical excellence from the national hospital build programme.”

Wycombe Hospital was accredited as an elective surgical hub in January of this year, a recognition the Trust celebrated as a mark of ‘clinical and operational excellence’ for patients who need specialist elective surgery.

Surgical hubs, which are separate from emergency services, are part of plans to increase surgical capacity.

They only perform planned surgery and mainly focus on high volume, low complexity procedures across ophthalmology, general surgery, orthopaedics, gynaecology, ear nose and throat, and urology.

Mr McLaren said the budget announcement signalled funding for further elective hubs, providing hope for Wycombe Hospital, which provides planned surgical care for the whole of Buckinghamshire.

He said: “We would hope that, as the only accredited hub in the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care System, we would be funded to establish Wycombe as a centre of surgical excellence fit for the next 50 years and build upon the already excellent clinical and operational teamwork.”

The Autumn budget promises £1.5 billion for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners ‘to build capacity for over 30,000 additional procedures and over 1.25 million diagnostic tests’.

The money could also fund new beds, help reduce waiting times and ‘help shift more care into the community’, the government said.

Although Wycombe has not officially been identified for new surgical funding, this possibility was also mentioned by the town’s former Conservative MP Steve Baker, who was ousted by Labour’s Emma Reynolds in the July 4 general election.

In a tweet on Tuesday, he wrote: “I see there is to be £1.57bn for new surgical hubs in the budget. Expect one in Wycombe, as I set out in the election campaign.”

During the election campaign, Mr Baker said the accreditation paved the way for the Wycombe Elective Surgical Centre to access additional funding.

The funding, he claimed, would be ‘crucial’ to the construction of a new elective care centre at Wycombe and ‘enhance’ the area’s health capability.

In June, he told the LDRS: “The future of Wycombe Hospital is secure. The accreditation of the elective surgical hub is part of its journey to getting funding to deliver a new building.”