Greater Manchester 'super hospitals': Stepping Hill completes quartet

Stepping Hill was chosen unanimously

Health bosses in Greater Manchester have chosen Stepping Hill Hospital as the last of four "super hospitals" to provide emergency surgery in the area.

Healthier Together - a review by NHS leaders - promises increased consultant cover at the four hospitals.

But some patients will have a longer journey to receive treatment.

Doctors voted unanimously to adding the Stockport Hospital to Manchester Royal Infirmary, Salford Royal and Royal Oldham.

An extra 35 consultants are to be recruited across A&E and general surgery.

They will provide at least 12 hours of cover a day in A&E seven days a week at the super hospitals, which will specialise in "emergency medicine and general surgery for patients with life threatening conditions."

The consultant surgeons will also operate at hospitals which are clustered with each of the four specialist hubs.

'Once-in-a-lifetime'

Stepping Hill had been vying with Manchester's Wythenshawe Hospital, the Royal Bolton and Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan to be the final specialist hospital.

Dr Chris Brookes, Medical Director of Healthier Together and a consultant at Salford Royal's emergency department said: "It has been my experience in major trauma, stroke and heart attack patients that people actually accept travelling a little further on those once-in-a-lifetime occasions when they really need that specialist care.

"What we must do though is make sure that the majority of care is still delivered locally and to a better standard than it is now."

In April the Government announced that representatives from the councils, hospitals and other providers, clinical commissioning groups and local NHS England management will be handed local control of Greater Manchester's NHS budget.

Stepping Hill Hospital was at the centre of a police inquiry over the deaths of patients in 2011 and 2012.

In May, nurse Victorino Chua, 49, received 25 life sentences for murdering two patients and poisoning others by injecting insulin into saline bags and ampoules.