60 Ipswich Hospital and NHS facts

DO you know how many people visit Ipswich Hospital every day or what 1930s patients had for dinner? In the year the NHS turns 60-years-old, we discovered 60 facts you may not know about Ipswich Hospital and the NHS.

1) The NHS is 60-years-old on Saturday, July 5 this year.

2) The Ipswich Hospital site covers 46 acres of land.

3) Almost half a million people receive health care services from the Ipswich Hospital.

4) On average, a patient's stay at Ipswich Hospital is 1.2 days less now than it was ten years ago.

5) Ipswich Hospital has 400 volunteers.

6) In 2007, the A&E department at Ipswich Hospital saw 51,295 new patients.

7) The NHS, on average, deals with 1 million patients every 36 hours - that's 463 people a minute or almost eight a second.

8) Ipswich Hospital delivered 3,818 babies in 2007, 268 were born at home.

9) The main part of Heath Road hospital was originally the infirmary wards of a workhouse built in 1889. In 1930 the Public Assistance Committee of the local authority took over - 80 beds were added to the existing 220 beds and a nurses' home was built. Later in the 1930s, two lifts, a small operating theatre, a separate entrance to Heath Road and an X-ray department were added.

10) Ward accommodation became known as Heathfield Municipal Hospital and separated from the Public Assistance Institution in 1938 when it was appropriated and renamed the Ipswich Borough General Hospital.

11) At the introduction of the NHS the Borough General Hospital and the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital (Anglesea Road) were both transferred to ownership of the minister of health. By 1955 it was officially regarded that they had merged into one hospital of two wings.

12) When the NHS was launched it had three core principles - that it meet the needs of everyone, be free at the point of delivery and be based on clinical need, not ability to pay. In 2000 a modernisation plan added other principles including commitments to providing a range of services, shaping services around patients' needs, minimising errors and supporting staff.

13) It was in 1952 when a one shilling (five pence) charge was introduced for prescriptions. Charges were abolished in 1965 but reintroduced in 1968.

14) Ipswich Hospital's library has more than 8,000 book titles.

15) When the NHS was launched in 1948 it had a budget of £437million (approximately £9billion at today's value). In 2007/08 it received ten times that amount - more than £90bn.

16) Computer tomography (CT) scans start to revolutionise the way doctors examine the body in 1972. The scanners produce 3D images from a large series of 2D X-rays

17) The structure of DNA was unveiled in 1953 by two Cambridge scientists - James D Watson and Francis Crick and so the study of diseases caused by defective genes was revolutionised.

18) The statutes and rules of the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital from 1911, amended in 1913, said “The matron shall be a single woman, or widow, without encumbrance and not under the age of 35 years”.

19) Ipswich Hospital is hoping to recruit 10,000 members (patients, staff and members of the public) as it applies to become a Foundation Trust.

20) A dozen eggs was among the thank you gifts received by matrons at Ipswich Hospital in 1928.

21) There are almost 8,000 people on the Ipswich Hospital site every day.

22) The Ipswich Hospital Pharmacy is the east of England's regional pharmacy manufacturing unit and sells drugs all over Europe.

23) Children visiting their sick parents in hospital were only allowed to visit at weekends until 1954 when daily visits were introduced.

24) In 2007, 26,326 patients were admitted as emergencies through A&E or other emergency assessment facilities at Ipswich Hospital.

25) The Ipswich Hospital website has pages in English, Portuguese, French, Polish, Farsi, Kurdish Sorani, Chinese and Bengali.

26) The Diabetic Foot Clinic at Ipswich Hospital has the lowest amputation rates in the country and among the lowest in the world.

27) Last year 279,384 patients attended Ipswich Hospital for an outpatient appointment, compared to 190 in 1837.

28) In 1948, when the NHS was created, nurses wore cloaks and capes as part of their uniform.

29) In 1929 a gift of £2,500 was made to the Ipswich and East Suffolk Hospital (later known as the Anglesea Road wing of the Ipswich Hospital) to buy radium for the treatment of cancer. The first treatment was carried out in August 1929 for cancer of the cervix.

30) The formal founding of a radiotherapy department at Ipswich dates from 1948 when the Nuffield Provincial Hospital Trust donated the sum of £20,481 for the setting up of a radiotherapy department at the Anglesea Road Hospital.

31) Developments continued and the department moved to Heath Road in 1991. When intensity modulated radiotherapy was introduced in 2002 it made Ipswich one of the first hospitals in the UK to provide the state-of-the-art treatment on a routine basis.

32) In 1958, the polio and diphtheria vaccinations programme ensured everyone under the age of 15 was vaccinated.

33) There were 263,989 patient meals served at Ipswich Hospital in 2006/07.

34) 50,000 people visit NHS accident and emergency departments daily.

35) Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) were introduced to the NHS in 1993. Ipswich Hospital's Garrett Anderson treatment centre - the hospital's biggest development for 30 years - is a PFI.

36) The East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital was one of the first English hospitals to undertake tuition of foreign nurses.

37) In 1967 the Abortion Act made abortion legal for up to 28 weeks of pregnancy.

38) Ipswich Hospital is expected to spend £192m in the 2008/09 year.

39) Ipswich Hospital received 94,277 referrals from GPs and others to be seen in outpatients in 2007.

40) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans were introduced in 1980.

41) The Ipswich Hospital pharmacy spends around £14m a year on drugs

42) The 24-hour telephone helpline NHS Direct was launched in 1998.

43) By the end of 2007, 91 per cent of patients were seen in the Ipswich Hospital sexual health clinic within 48 hours of making contact with the department.

44) Men and women live an average of ten years longer now than they did before the creation of the NHS.

45) The first nurses' quarters at East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital were built in 1892.

46) Ipswich Hospital's soon-to-open £26m treatment centre is named after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - the first Englishwoman to qualify as a doctor. She came to Suffolk in 1902 and in 1908 became the mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor in England. 47) The national smoking ban was a milestone for the NHS in 2007 - making smoking illegal in enclosed public places in England and Wales.

48) The Ipswich Hospital radio service began in the early 1970s at the old Anglesea Road hospital. It broadcasts every Ipswich Town FC home game from Portman Road and is run by volunteers.

49) Ipswich Hospital has 14 user groups to work in partnership with its staff to look at services and work towards making improvements.

50) In 2007, 37,611 patients were admitted for a planned operation or procedure.

51) Twenty years ago, only 20pc of babies weighing less than 1,000g (2lbs 2oz) at birth survived. Now that figure is closer to 80pc.

52) Nurses make up the largest share of the NHS workforce, at 30pc.

53) During the First World War temporary accommodation costing £10,000 was provided for wounded soldiers and sailors at Ipswich Hospital.

54) The NHS organ donor register was set up in 1994.

55) The first successful instance of keyhole surgery was carried out in 1980 and saw the removal of a gallbladder. The procedure has become one of the most common uses of this kind of surgery, but other examples are hernia repairs and removal of the colon and the kidney.

56) In 1934 dinner was served at 12.30pm and every day was cooked meat (fish once a week), potatoes and other vegetables, milk pudding, fruit or stewed fruit or treacle pudding.

57) Ipswich Hospital had 371 doctors and dentists and 1,075 nurses, midwives and health visitors, 2006/07 figures showed.

58) Around 77pc of today's NHS workforce is female.

59) The contraceptive pill was first made widely available in 1961. The number of women nationally taking the pill rose from 50,000 to one million in seven years.

60) The NHS in England and Wales employs approximately one person in every 40. It is the fourth largest employer in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the Wal-Mart supermarket chain and the Indian Railways.