Holby City (series 1) "Holby City" was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin–off from the long–running BBC medical drama "Casualty". Young wanted to explore what happened to patients treated in "Casualty" once they were taken away to the hospital's surgical wards. While "Casualty" scope is limited to "accident of the week" storylines about patients entering hospital, "Holby City" allowed the possibility of storylines about long–term care, rather than immediate life and death decisions. Although both shows are set in the same hospital, the "Casualty" set in Bristol was not large enough to encompass the surgical ward and operating theatre required
South Tipperary General Hospital department. The hospital saw 1,178 live births in 2008. The hospital provides 318 beds, of which 217 are in-patient beds, 25 are designated for day cases, 25 for emergency department patients, and 2 for labour ward admissions, while a further 49 are reserved for psychiatric patients. Specialty services include general medicine, general surgery, dermatology, accident and emergency, oncology, palliative care, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, psychiatry.< The national median waiting time for surgery in November 2009 stood at 1.1 months; at South Tipperary General Hospital this figure was 0.7 months. Overall waiting time was 0.7 months, above the national median