South Manchester University Hospitals is a large NHS trust with an annual expenditure of £180 million and 3,500 staff providing care for more than 80,000 inpatients and day cases, 250,000 outpatients and 55,000 people who attend the accident and emergency department.

We provide a wide range of general health services to the local population of South Manchester and South Trafford, North East Cheshire and West Stockport, and specialist services to patients from further afield. Our fields of specialist expertise lie in:

• the treatment of heart and lung conditions, including specialist surgery and transplantation
• Burns and plastic surgery
• Cancer services
• The rehabilitation of patients with physical disabilites

The opening of a new 319 bed acute unit in summer 2001 marked the completion of the first phase of a £113 million major development on the Wythenshawe Hospital site. Wythenshawe Hospital is the centre for all emergency, critical and acute inpatient care in South Manchester. We continue to provide a range of outpatient, day and therapy services at Withington Hospital. South Manchester Primary Care Trust manages the Withington site and has plans to develop a £20 million community there. The Government has allocated a further £14 million to new cardiac facilities at the hospital. The new unit will be adjacent to the Transplant Centre.

The new acute unit at Wythenshawe provides some of the finest and most modern NHS facilities in the UK. A second phase of development is currently underway at Wythenshawe to provide a new day treatment unit, a 44 bed rehabilitation unit and additional outpatient facilities.

Research and teaching play an important role within the Trust which is an integral part of the Medical School of The University of Manchester. A significant proportion of teaching takes place in South Manchester and a new £9 million integrated education and research centre which opened at Wythenshawe Hospital in November 2001 provides a new focus for this.