Access the patient information page for the MEOC here.
Quick links:
- What is the MEOC?
- Take a tour of the MEOC
- How will the MEOC benefit our communities?
- About the MEOC partnership
- MEOC in the news
What is the MEOC?
The Mexborough Elective Orthopaedic Centre of Excellence (MEOC for short) is a collaboration between Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals (DBTH), Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (BH) and The Rotherham Hospital Foundation Trust (TRFT), to provide a dedicated orthopaedic hub offering additional services for the people of South Yorkshire.
The MEOC is a £14.9 million project, starting its planning phase in 2021, completed in December 2023, with the first patients admitted for surgery on 15 January 2024.
Patients on orthopaedic waiting lists at all of the three hospital trusts can have their surgery at the MEOC. The procedures available at the MEOC include hip and knee replacement alongside foot, ankle, hand, wrist, and shoulder surgery. This service is an additional facility, with applicable patients to be offered their preference of receiving care and treatment at their nearest hospital or the specialised service at the MEOC.
The centre is a specialised unit and will operate 50 weeks per year, initially for five days per week, rising to a six day service.
The MEOC performs orthopaedic surgery for the following areas:
- Knee and hip replacements
- Hand and wrist
- Foot and ankle
- Arm and shoulder
- Carpals
The MEOC forms part of Montagu Hospital in Mexborough, a small non-acute hospital with over 50 inpatient beds run by DBTH. Other services at Montagu include a nurse-led minor injuries unit, a day surgery unit, renal dialysis, a chronic pain management unit and a wide range of outpatient clinics. Montagu is the site of DBTH’s Rehabilitation Centre, Clinical Simulation Centre and the base for the abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programme. The MEOC is part of a series of developments at Montagu, including the recently opened Community Diagnostic Centre.
Take a tour of the MEOC
See what it is like inside the new facility through an interactive tour.
Click to access a full map showing the entrance to the MEOC, located close to the Fred and Ann Green Rehabilitation Centre within Montagu Hospital. From there you can explore the unit and walk through each of the clinical and ward areas.
A video is also available below to show what the unit looked like before opening.
How the MEOC benefits our communities
A benefit of its location in Mexborough is that Montagu Hospital is defined as a ‘cold site’ and does not provide emergency services. This means that, despite peaks in activity within the wider acute hospitals, the MEOC is ringfenced and protected against the usual cancellations and postponements caused by emergency pressures, particularly in winter.
It will play a significant role in reducing orthopaedic waiting lists and waiting times for local people. In the first year of operation, it is anticipated the centre will undertake some 2,200 orthopaedic procedures, equating to about 40% of the current orthopaedic waiting list.
Other benefits include:
- Greater throughput for hip and knee arthroplasties through increasing the number of zero and one-day discharges.
- Released capacity at host sites for maintaining existing provision of orthopaedics to ensure that MEOC workload is additive.
- Implementation of best practice Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) care pathways with standardised peri-operative care and pre-assessment co-designed with clinicians to reflect management of care between hosts sites and MEOC.
- Minimise on the day cancellations through consistent and coordinated pre-assessment processes eliminating all preventable cancellations i.e., where there are no new clinical reasons which prevent surgery.
- Achievement of national targets to deliver 85% utilisation of staffed theatres and 85%-day case rate.
- Standardisation of equipment and consumables to minimise unwarranted variation in practice and improving cost effectiveness.
The breakdown of activity proposed for the first full year of operation is as follows:
About the MEOC partnership
The MEOC is a service delivered through a collaborative partnership between three NHS Trusts; Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, The Rotherham Hospital Foundation Trust (TRFT) and Barnsley Hospital Foundation Trust (BH).
MEOC in the news
First patients attend for surgery as Mexborough service opens its doors
Works officially started on the Montagu Elective Orthopaedic Centre (MEOC)
State-of-the-art Orthopaedic surgery service celebrates its 100th hip replacement patient
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