The Royal Surrey County Hospital (RSCH) is a 527-bedded District General Hospital, located on the fringe of Guildford, serving a population of 320,000 for general services and 1,200,000 for cancer services. The Royal Surrey is also a specialist centre for diabetes, ENT and maxillo facial surgery.
According to recent surveys, the Trust mortality rate has increased. The hospital is among the twelve UK hospitals with the highest death rates.
It is situated close to the University of Surrey allowing it to offer opportunities for research and pioneering treatments such as fibroid embolisation, brachytherapy and minimal access surgery.
The Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford became one of the first NHS Trusts in 1991. It treats over 260,000 patients a year - 56,000 Accident and Emergency, 39,000 in-patients and day-patients and 167,000 outpatients. The Trust's annual income to run its services is £199 million.
It employs 3,400 staff, with 362 doctors, 754 nurses and midwives as well as therapists, scientific and technical and support staff (wholetime equivalent). The Trust has 20 wards comprising general and specialist surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics, oncology, orthopaedics, general and specialist medicine, intensive care and coronary care, with 527 beds in total. There are 12 dedicated surgical theatres, one obstetric and one minor operations theatre and state of the art outpatient, audiology and rehabilitation departments.
From October 2006 to October 2007 a successful campaign was fought to save the hospital, along with St Luke's Cancer Centre, from closure. The campaign attracted the support of over 100,000 local people through petitions, protests, publicity and lobbying at a local and national level. Threats remain however to hospitals in West Sussex as part of the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority's Fit for the Future strategy.
The trust is considered having serious financial concerns .
Famous quotes containing the words royal, surrey, county and/or hospital:
“Not to these shores she came! this other Thrace,
Environ barbarous to the royal Attic;
How could her delicate dirge run democratic,
Delivered in a cloudless boundless public place
To an inordinate race?”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Then think I thus: sith such repair,
So long time war of valiant men,
Was all to win a lady fair,
Shall I not learn to suffer then,
And think my life well spent to be,
Serving a worthier wight than she?”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)