The Princess Royal Bristol Surgical Centre at Southmead Hospital is now fully open.
The dedicated centre for planned operations has created capacity across Bristol hospitals to enable an additional 6,700 procedures to be carried out each year.
The £49.9 million centre was built with funding from NHS England as part of efforts to reduce the elective surgery backlog that built up during the Covid pandemic.
It is a joint project between North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, supported by Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) Integrated Care Board.
The centre has four operating theatres along with X-ray facilities, medirooms and a 40-bed inpatient ward.
The move into the new ward was led by Sister Helen Jones, who also brought the first patient into the hospital’s Brunel building when it opened in 2014.