MORE beds, more staff, more cleaners, more infection control and more equipment are all on the way at Warrington Hospital as bosses invest more than £7million in the future.

The budget for 2009/10 includes a £1.8million investment in beds and the associated staff following the busiest winter in a decade.

The extra pressures exposed a shortfall in beds, so every unnecessary administration room on wards is to be made into a patient bay, adding around a ward-and-a-half’s worth of beds.

Forty-five new jobs will be created by opening the extra beds and the recruitment process for these has already begun.

A further £600,000 will go into providing more staff for A&E, meaning a reduced reliance on agency staff, said chief executive Catherine Beardshaw.

Additional staff will also be hired in the pathology lab, where £120,000 will pay for salaries and consumables.

And £65,000 will buy new equipment for the endoscopy ward, while £30,000 will be spent in radiology to provide an out-of-hours service.

“This is about getting our house in order and making sure we’ve got the foundations,” said Mrs Beardshaw.

New infection control measures will see every elective patient screened for MRSA prior to their operation and those testing positive will be cleansed before surgery.

Plans are also in place to screen all emergency surgery patients, though the nature of their care can make this difficult, Mrs Beardshaw said.

A new respiratory consultant will also be hired.

There are also plans to open a new emergency assessment centre at A&E next January.

The centre would be the first point of call for those sent to A&E by their GP so they can bypass waiting and be admitted to hospital.

The hospital made savings of £2.3million in 2008/09, which was £649,000 more than budgeted for. The money has been reinvested in the hospital.

The hospital’s total 2009/10 budget is around £170million.

At NHS Warrington, the body that distributes money for health services in the town, the budget has yet to be set.

“We will ensure that we will direct the resources available to us to those areas where we know there will be the greatest impact on the health of the local population,” a spokesman said.

“As always, there are financial challenges to be met, however, we will continue to look at our efficiencies to ensure we get the most we can for the money we have for the better of the people of Warrington.”