Making sure patients get quick access to planned care is still a key priority for all NENC Providers. This was a key ask of the whole NHS this year and we have made solid progress in our region.
Our performance against the 18-week Referral to Treatment standard is still among the best in England.
“Over 70% of patients in the North East and North Cumbria had their planned care within 18 weeks. This compares to 62% nationally.”
We share the same goal for patients to get the care they need sooner and make it easier to access. We also want to make the best use of the resources we have.
Our RTT performance shows the impact of shared leadership and joint working. It makes our services stronger with more patients getting care sooner, often closer to home. These are some examples of how we work together to achieve this:
Mutual support
Our NENC Providers still meet weekly to review waiting lists and see how they can help each other. The aim is to share support to help patients get care more quickly. The focus is on those people who have been waiting the longest time for care.
During the year, our teams helped more than 600 patients get care sooner. This was across a range of services and specialties. We give patients a choice, where we can, to have their care sooner in a different hospital.
We have also started to move to a more planned approach to mutual aid. This will make it even easier for us to help patients get the care they need as quickly as possible.
A shared Patient Tracking List across all FTs will help with this work. We will use the Federated Data Platform to do this and plan to roll this out next year.
Maximising use of surgical hubs
We now have a task and finish group in place to look at how we use surgical hubs across the region. A key piece of work has taken place to get a clear picture of the existing hub estate. This has helped us understand what facilities we have and the care they can provide. There are now six surgical hubs across the region.
We have worked to set up a ‘community of practice’ to help share and spread best practice. Colleagues have visited each other’s sites to see how things work. They have helped support each other in accreditation and share what works well and what is challenging. This has helped people learn from each other and build stronger connections. Our next steps are to think about how much work each hub could do and how we could share this across the region. We also want to think about how we align metrics and measure outcomes.
Improving theatres and productivity
We have also made good progress to look at how we use theatres across the region. A similar task and finish group is in place for this. The aim is to make processes more consistent, so staff can work in the same way where possible. This helps us make the best use of theatre time so we can treat more patients. Shared data has helped us find areas to improve. We now have more consistent and efficient ways in place for how we use theatres. This has helped:
- to reduce how many times we need to postpose surgery.
- to increase how much day-case surgery we do.
- to make sure patients are ready for surgery.
Experience of waiting for care
Listening to our patients is vital to our work. Our FTs took part in a survey to understand what it feels like for people who are on our waiting lists for care. By working together, we all used the same method. It was important that we had a consistent approach to this work. It helps us know what patients across the region feel and compare their feedback. This drives where we need to improve and helps us learn from each other.
Using data to drive improvement
This year we did a review of how our FTs perform in line with the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) best practice. We used GIRFT to look at outpatients as a key focus. This helped us spot differences, find new chances to improve, and help reduce missed appointments.
All FTs are working to make better use of digital tools to see patients and keep them up to date. We are looking at how we can make greater use of Advice and Guidance with GPs. We are also looking at ways to empower patients on their follow up care. This is through the use of Patient Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU), where it is right for patients.
