Opening date set for £7.5m eye care centre at Southlands hospital

Western Sussex Eye Care at Southlands will open on Tuesday, June 27, after a year-long building programme was finished on time and in budget this month.

Masoud Teimory, consultant ophthalmologist at Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “There are very few brand new eye departments in the country built to such high specifications and we are very fortunate to receive a £7.5 million investment for this complex project that sets us apart from other trusts in the region and beyond.

“Western Sussex Eye Care Southlands will offer access to some of the very best ophthalmic assessment and surgical facilities in the country, matching our other excellent facility at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester.”

The building has been specifically designed to enable one of the trust’s busiest specialities to meet rising demand, a spokesperson said.

The centre will deliver high quality eye care while improving the hospital experience for ophthalmology patients, said the spokesperson.

New ‘one stop’ clinics will be introduced at the building, which aim to reduce the number of multiple hospital attendances for thousands of patients with common eye conditions such as cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.

The building also provides ‘more spacious and accessibility-friendly facilities’ compared to the current Ophthalmology Department at Worthing Hospital, which relocates to the new unit in Southlands Hospital in June.

Chief executive, Marianne Griffiths, said: “Three years ago we made the difficult decision to sell part of our Southlands estate for redevelopment, in order to provide all our inpatients with access to 24-hour A&E and emergency care services at Worthing and St Richard’s hospitals.

“At the time, we made a pledge to ring-fence the proceeds from this sale to reinvest into Southlands Hospital and the development of our new eye care service marks the fulfilment of that promise.”

A programme to expand car parking provision at Southlands Hospital is underway now that the main building works have concluded.

A spokesman also confirmed that a café run by the Friends of Southlands Hospital will be located in the new building.

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