University Hospital of North Durham

The University Hospital of North Durham (UHND), provides acute services for the north of County Durham, north east England; including Durham, Chester-le-Street and Derwentside. The hospital is operated by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. The Chief Executive is Stephen Eames (from late November 2007). Its quality of services and use of resources were rated 'good' by the HealthCare Commission Ratings. The hospital is a Private Finance Initiative hospital built to replace the older Dryburn Hospital on the same site.

Services Provided Accident and Emergency, Nurse Practitioners (Out of hours) centre, Maternity Unit/SCBU, Gynaecology, Orthopaedics and Traumas, General Surgery (Day, elective and emergency), Childrens Ward, Acute Medical, Intensive Therapy Unit(ITU), Coronary Care Unit(CCU), Dermatology, Vascular Surgery, Plastic Surgery, Stroke Rehab, Haematology

The hospital works in parnership with Bishop Auckland General Hospital and Darlington Memorial Hospital and is the largest in the trust (based on bed numbers). The Main Hospital building contains the vast majority of the hospitals departments. It has a basement for pathology and pharmacy and 3 further floors, each comprising of a long main corridor with wards and deparments on both sides. Most of the wards comprise of 4 bedded single sex bays.

A few buildings from the original 'Dryburn Hospital' remain. These are used for less acute services such as the out of hours centre, and the renal dialysis centre. This area is called the East Wing.

The hospital is supported by a further 88 community hospital beds in its catchment region for rehabilitation.

Patients from this catchment region requiring heart surgery or radiotherapy are normally treated at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital, While Patients requiring Neurosurgery are usually treated at Newcastle General Hospital