HORTON GENERAL HOSPITAL

The Horton General Hospital in Banbury serves the growing population in the north of Oxfordshire and surrounding areas. It has over 220 inpatient beds and over 20 day-case beds, and is an acute general hospital providing a wide range of services, including: emergency department (with a clinical decision unit), general surgery, acute general medicine, trauma and orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, critical care unit (used flexibly for intensive care), coronary care, cancer resource centre.

The majority of these services have inpatient beds and outpatient clinics, with the outpatient department running clinics with visiting consultants from Oxford in dermatology, neurology, physical medicine, rheumatology, ophthalmology, radiotherapy, oral surgery and paediatric cardiology. Acute general medicine also includes a short-stay admissions ward, a medical assessment unit, a day hospital as part of specialised elderly care rehabilitation services and a cardiology service. Other clinical services include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, radiology and pathology. The radiology service includes a managed mobile MRI and a breast cancer screening unit. Currently, there are also four main operating theatres and a large day-case unit. The hospital employs 1, 200 people, making it one of Banbury's biggest employers. The local community takes great pride in the hospital and provides exceptional levels of volunteer support through the League of Friends, the Authorised Volunteer Service, Pets as Therapy Volunteers and Horton General Hospital Radio. Integration with the Trust has provided a stimulus for closer clinical partnerships, with Horton clinical staff providing clinical services in the other Trust hospitals and satellite outpatient clinics in towns such as Chipping Norton and Brackley. There are also video-conference satellite links to Oxford. The Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust provides on-site clinical services such as Speech and Language Therapy and Podiatry and directly manages the GP Out of Hours Service for the north of the county.