History of UHSM
Baguley Sanatorium - the forerunner of Wythenshawe Hospital - led the way in the fight against tuberculosis, opening its doors over a century ago.
Widely seen as a deficiency disease, TB was a mass killer, claiming 2,000 lives per year in Manchester during the 1870s. But with TB continuing to spread throughout the late 1800s, a £60,000 100-bed hospital was commissioned. Baguley Sanatorium, for the treatment of infectious diseases, was publicly opened by the Rt. Hon. Frederick Arthur, 16th Earl of Derby, on October 4, 1902. It became a 150-bed sanatorium for the sole treatment of TB patients in 1912.
During the First World War Blocks 6 and 7 were constructed, accommodating an additional 100 male and 53 female patients.
By 1922, beds had increased to 333. A combined chapel and recreation hall, for holding concerts, opened in 1933. The 1930s and 1940s saw great changes in size and function. Some patients were transferred to Withington Hospital, the number of female beds was increased, the hospital's first operating theatre was opened, and a nurses home, the most modern in the country at the time, was constructed.
The idea of Wythenshawe Hospital was initially discussed in 1939 but, with war imminent, the priority was to adapt Baguley Sanatorium to cope with the expected rush of civilian war casualties. An Emergency Medical Services (EMS) hospital - consisting of rows of wooden huts - was constructed and used to treat soldiers who had been injured or burned. As a result, Baguley became an early pioneer of plastic surgery. The Plastic Surgery Unit transferred to a purpose built unit at Withington Hospital in 1969.
By the birth of the National Health Service in 1948 the hospital required urgent modernisation. It was taken over by the South Manchester Hospital Management Committee.
By 1950 the last of the military patients had departed and one ward was renovated as a children's Ear, Nose & Throat ward. While Baguley remained a chest hospital, the hutted EMS area became the early Wythenshawe Hospital.
In 1952 the new chest clinic at Baguley Hospital was opened. The TB death toll by this time was less than one a day.
The Hospital was gaining an impressive reputation. In 1952 the new chest clinic at Baguley Hospital was opened. In 1956 the Wythenshawe Recorder reported: Wythenshawe must be one of the most un-hospital like hospitals in Manchester. Not quite home from home, but nearer than might be expected.
In 1955 the Ministry of Health included Wythenshawe in its list of the first new hospitals to be built under the National Health Service. Plans were to demolish the EMS hospital and build a 516-bed hospital on the site. However years of wrangling between Manchester Regional Hospital Board, Manchester Corporation and Central Government followed.
Eventually, it was decided to build a 350-bed hospital on land in the grounds north of Baguley Hospital. Under the revised plan, the EMS huts would also be retained.
The £720,000 Maternity Hospital finally opened in 1965. By the end of the 1960s Wythenshawe was a £7.2m general hospital specialising in (Baguley site) chest clinic, respiratory diseases, cardiology, cardio-thoracic surgery, (maternity hospital) ante-natal and post-natal clinics, (Wythenshawe site) general medicine, general surgery, orthopaedic, gynaecology, dermatology, ENT, cerebral palsy, paediatric, paediatric surgery and plastic surgery.
During the 1970s and 1980s Wythenshawe became one of the busiest and most successful hospitals in the North West. In 1987 surgeons carried out the first heart transplant operation at Wythenshawe. A new transplant centre was officially opened by Princess Margaret in 1993, the same year that the 200th transplant was carried out.
In 1994 the EMS wooden huts were knocked down, 40 years after being initially earmarked for demolition. It was the end of an era but the start of another multi-million pound expansion programme for the hospital.
Until 1994, South Manchester Health Authority (SMHA) was responsible for running Withington, Wythenshawe and Christie hospitals. As part of major reforms of the NHS, the hospitals became self-governing trusts. SMHA was split into two trusts, the Christie NHS Trust and South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust (SMUHT).
The latter developed a rationalisation strategy based on Wythenshawe as the main 'state-of-the-art' inpatient hospital with Withington as the community hospital featuring outpatient facilities, some special units and a day case service.
By 1995 the Trust was treating more than 7,500 in-patients and day cases, 300,000 outpatients, with 90,000 attendances at the A&E departments; it had an annual income of £150m and employed some 5,500 people.
Achievements in the last decade include the building of The North West Lung Centre, two new state-of-the-art cardiac catheterisation laboratories, the transfer of the cystic fibrosis unit to a £1.25m purpose-built unit at Wythenshawe, the opening of the day case service, and the transfer of the maternity services from Withington to a new £2.8m unit at Wythenshawe.
A £2m extension to the children's unit opened in 2000 while the £9m education and research centre opened one year later.
2001 saw the opening of Wythenshawe's Acute Unit, financed and built under the Government's Private Finance Initiative. Marking the first phase of a major £113m development of Wythenshawe Hospital, the new unit consists of an state-of-the-art Accident and Emergency department, a burns unit, coronary care unit, intensive care unit, six operating theatres, five medical and five surgical wards, an x-ray department, fracture clinic and renal department.
On 1 November 2006, UHSM was authorised as a Foundation Trust, and the Wythenshawe Hospital site is now developing as a major health campus, as well as working in partnership with a number of other NHS organisations to offer services at other hospitals.
Recent years have seen significant capital investment in the Wythenshawe Hospital campus. In 2007 we opened the £15M Nightingale Centre and Genesis Prevention Centre, Europe’s largest breast cancer prevention facility. In 2008, we opened the £20M North West Heart Centre, which provides state-of-the-art intensive care and investigation facilities including a cardiac MRI scanner. In 2009, we completed the £8M to expansion of our regional cystic fibrosis service. In November 2010, we will open our new wide-bore MRI scanner (the first at a UK hospital) and we are also mid-way through a three-year scheme to expand our maternity services following the designation of UHSM as one of eight ‘supercentres’ in Greater Manchester for the care of women, babies and children as a consequence of the changes outlined in ‘Making It Better’.
UHSM currently has an income of over £300M per annum and employs 4,500 staff.
Demand for FT services 2009/10:
- 85,321 people attended the emergency department.
- 78,734 people were admitted as inpatients for elective surgery & day cases
- 370,180 people attended outpatient appointments