Merger has helped cut hospital stay times
Patients are spending less time in hospitals across Essex thanks to merger improvements at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which is now one of the largest Trusts in the country.
The Trust saw the joining together of Basildon, Broomfield and Southend Hospitals in April, making it easier to work together than ever before, helping to improve care for its 1.2 million patients.
Charlotte Williams, Director of Strategy, said: “We’ve already reduced the time some of our patients have to stay in hospital, which helps keep them safe and means we are able to see more patients, quicker.”
The transfer of emergency cardiology patients from Broomfield Hospital to Basildon Hospital has seen the length of stay go down from 5.9 days to 3.7 days, as patients are recovering more quickly and fewer operations are being delayed. This has meant cardiology patients are spending almost 100 days less in hospital a month.
Many hip and knee surgery patients are seen at Braintree Community Hospital, which as a centre of excellence for planned orthopaedic surgery means there are less operations cancelled due to emergencies. This has also seen patients’ time in hospital slashed, with 50 patients a week who once spent 4.8 days in hospital, now only stay 2.9 days.
And it hasn’t just been about reducing time in hospital, but also improving care and meaning some patients haven’t had to travel to London for that care.
The Trust’s new vascular emergency surgery centre service went live at Basildon Hospital in March. It continued to serve emergency patients throughout the first surge of COVID-19, and has been successfully completing emergency vascular surgery both for local Basildon patients and those transferred from across our network.
The 24/7 emergency interventional radiology service across the Trust has been at Basildon since January 2020, helping improve results through faster access to treatment and removing the need for patients to travel to London or Cambridge. As of last month, it had completed over 130 out-of-hours procedures.
Charlotte said: “Our teams have already shown that by working together we can make changes which support better clinical care for our patients. We continue to plan for further improvements by working with our wider health, care and voluntary sector system in mid and south Essex, as we go into 2021 and beyond.”