Smith+Nephew and Standard Health partner on first Orthopaedic Ambulatory Surgery Centre in the UK

Smith+Nephew (LSE:SN, NYSE:SNN), the global medical technology company, today announces a strategic partnership with Standard Health www.standardhealth.co.uk to support the development of the first-ever Orthopaedic Ambulatory Surgery Centre in the UK. Based in Poole, Dorset, the new centre will offer NHS and private patients access to leading joint repair and replacement technology for conditions such as rotator cuff repair, ACL reconstruction, knee and hip replacements, and foot & ankle/hand & wrist procedures.

Standard Health is a clinical healthcare provider, responsible for site development and operation of the facility with Smith+Nephew supplying its innovative portfolio of medical technologies. Standard Health expects to open a further 10 additional UK sites in the following three years and 20 in total by 2030.

The new centre in Poole will cover day and overnight-stay cases which make up the vast majority of orthopaedic procedures. It will mirror the Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) model in the US, where Smith+Nephew is a major partner to many sports medicine and orthopaedic facilities. Benefits derived from US-based ASC settings for both HCPs and their patients are well documented, and may include:

• Greater procedural efficiency due to streamlined workflows¹
• A 92% patient satisfaction rate for both care and service received from ASCs¹
• Decreased costs to the health system. In the US, outpatient joint replacements at ASCs reduce the costs of joint replacements by 40% compared to hospital-based surgery.²

There are currently more than 6,000 ASCs in the United States that account for greater than 50% of all outpatient surgical procedures.^3,4 The Orthopaedic Ambulatory Surgery Centre in Poole is expected to open in 2025 and serve thousands of patients per calendar year, with the majority being NHS referrals. There are currently more than 850,000 people waiting for orthopaedic surgery in the UK.⁵ As a result, the NHS commissioning landscape is reliant on independent providers to address this demand.

“The Standard Health Orthopaedic Ambulatory Surgical Centre model will bring the benefits long enjoyed by US patients to those on waiting lists in the UK,” said Craig Gaffin, President of Global Orthopaedics at Smith+Nephew. “Our expertise with ASCs and broad portfolio of solutions will ensure that facilities and patients have access to world-class orthopaedic, sports medicine and wound management medical technology to help surgeons deliver an outstanding experience.”