Exeter former Covid hospital completes 1,000 operations

The hospital is now a diagnostics centre and offers specialist eye, rheumatology and ophthalmology treatments

A hospital set up to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic has completed its 1,000th knee or hip replacement operation.

The NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter, a former Homebase, was created in 2020 with 116 beds to ease waiting lists.

It is now a diagnostics centre and offers specialist eye, rheumatology and ophthalmology treatments.

The NHS spent £16m creating the current hospital, the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital NHS Trust said.

The NHS spent £16m creating the current hospital

The Nightingale Hospital in Exeter was one of seven critical care temporary hospitals around England built to deal with the demands of the pandemic.

Named after Florence Nightingale, considered to be the founder of modern nursing, the building of the Exeter site was completed in July 2020.

The facility received its first Covid-19 patients in November of the same year and in March 2021 the last Covid-19 patient was discharged from the hospital.

Chris Tidman, the NHS Trust's deputy chief executive, said he was "absolutely delighted" to reach the 1,000 operations milestone.

"This is helping us get through the big backlog and this area has some of the longest waits in the country," he said.

"For the vast majority of hip and knee replacements patients don't need to be on a busy hospital site with all the critical care back-up.

"You can be done and dusted by the brilliant teams that we have and out the same day in many cases."

Follow BBC News South West on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [e-mail].