Costs Associated with Sterilising Orthopaedic Instrument Trays
Case reference FOI2026/00983
Received 26 March 2026
Published 16 July 2026
Request
Response
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request detailed information regarding the costs and activity associated with the sterilisation and reprocessing of orthopaedic instrument trays within your Trust.
Please provide the following information for the most recent full financial year available: 2025/2026 Financial Year values are presented below.
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1. Costs of Sterilisation and Associated Services
Please provide the current cost of sterilisation, including transportation, for the following orthopaedic procedure types:
a. Primary total knee arthroplasty: Do not have this information available for this specific procedure.
b. Revision total knee arthroplasty: Do not have this information available for this specific procedure.
c. Primary total hip arthroplasty: Do not have this information available for this specific procedure.
d. Revision total hip arthroplasty: Do not have this information available for this specific procedure.
If the Trust does not hold costs specifically at the procedure level, please provide any costing or activity data that would allow these to be derived, including (but not limited to):
• Labour costs: £2.71m for financial year 25/26.
• Overheads (e.g., facilities, utilities, estate costs): Not able to answer, not within Sterile Service's budget.
• Consumables (e.g., wraps, containers, chemical agents):
• Transportation/Logistics: £176,444.00 financial year 25/26.
• Equipment depreciation and maintenance costs: Depreciation is not measured. Average monthly maintenance cost is £133,744 for financial year 25/26.
• Instrument repair and replacement costs relating to decontamination: £28,110.00 for financial year 25/26.
• Any costs specifically attributable to orthopaedic trays, if these are separately recorded: This is not separately recorded.
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2. Activity Volumes
For the same period, please provide: Unable to extract orthopaedic data from traceability system. However, the Trust completed 6484 orthopaedic cases in 25/26 financial year.
a. The number of orthopaedic instrument trays sterilised or reprocessed for each of the procedure categories listed in Section 1.
If procedure level data is unavailable, please provide any available categorisation (e.g., “hip”, “knee”, “major orthopaedics”, etc.).
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3. Sterile Services Provision
Please provide the following details about your sterilisation service model:
a Whether the service is outsourced, in house, or a combination: In house.
b Any additional fees or surcharges for: N/A
c Out of hours processing: N/A
d Urgent or fast tracked requests:
If outsourced: N/A
e The name of the provider: N/A
f The distance in miles from each hospital site to the sterile services facility: N/A
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4. Costing Methodology
Please provide copies of, or extracts from, any internal costing methodology, policies, allocation models, or reference documents used to:
a Calculate the cost of tray sterilisation: Cost of tray sterilisation is not a method of measurement. SSD budget is based on Theatre's performance and is a block contract funding stream to SSD.
b Allocate overheads to sterile services: Information not known. Not in SSD budget.
c Determine per tray or per procedure costings, if applicable: N/A
Note - All figures provided are for all three SSD sites as all sites provide the decontamination of Orthopaedic procedures, elective and trauma inclusive. Whilst elective orthopaedic work is primarily undertaken at one site we do not have the ability to break this down to specific labour / material costs for only processing Orthopaedics.
Documents
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