With over 750,000[i] people currently waiting for elective orthopaedic operations in England, there has never been a greater need for highly productive units working in partnership. Edge Health was therefore honoured to sponsor and present the Partnerships and Integration Initiative awardat the recent National Orthopaedic Alliance Awards event.
The winner of the award, South West Ambulatory Orthopaedic Centre (SWAOC) is the elective orthopaedic hub set up at the renovated Nightingale hospital in Exeter to deliver high-volume and low-complexity (HVLC) activity.
The SWAOC hub was formed from the national initiative to develop 91 hubs across the country and help drive down the backlog in elective orthopaedics. SWAOC won the award for its exceptional results, which included delivering over half (56%) of their activity as same day procedures – a rare, but critical achievement for managing limited inpatient bed capacity.
This outcome was driven by a clinical redesign of the facilities to best align with the hub’s goals and a multidisciplinary team that reviewed international best practice. To do this, the SWAOC team visited exemplar units, engaged with regional clinicians, and developed standardisation pathways of care to deliver better outcomes. As a result, fewer beds are taken up by patients recovering from surgery, reducing the burden on NHS resources more generally.
Edge health presenting the excellence in orthopaedics award in the ‘partnerships and integration initiative’ category to the south west ambulatory orthopaedic centre for a revolutionary collaborative approach to delivering orthopaedic surgery and tackling the backlog (download project poster)
Jonathan Howell, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Royal Devon University Healthcare said:
“This award and recognition by our peers of the fantastic results achieved by our multi-disciplinary team, has delighted all of us at SWAOC, and the many people in the wider Devon community who have contributed to this project. It is particularly fulfilling for us to have been recognised for our innovative approach to elective orthopaedics so soon after opening this year, and it is testament to the tremendous efforts of all those people who have given their precious time to work on this venture”
Jonathan Howell, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Royal Devon University Healthcare
The elective hub and HVLC programme
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increasing focus on the elective care backlog that has continued to grow. A solution that emerged from GIRFT in 2021 was the prospect of establishing elective activity hubs, like SWAOC, to rapidly deliver HVLC activity.
Work undertaken by Edge Health to support this programme looked at the opportunity for these hubs, and the capacity required to meet the potential demand. As a result, the policy received over £1.5 billion of funding for the next 3 years and in the last 9 months, over 90 hubs have been set up and are starting to deliver results.
Some of the hubs, like SWAOC, have demonstrated rapid results and now provide a template for others to learn from and follow – both nationally, in the NHS, but also internationally.
What can other orthopaedic departments learn from SWAOC
It is clear that system working, collaboration, and the development of new pathways have been core to the success of SWAOC.
Mary Stocker, Consultant Anaesthetist, Torbay and South Devon NHS FT said:
“We are delighted to receive this NOA Excellence in Orthopaedics Award in recognition of the exceptional patient outcomes and innovative pathways delivered by the SWAOC multidisciplinary team. The volume of outstanding feedback we receive daily from our patients is a tribute to our team and the outstanding care they provide.
Mary Stocker, Consultant Anaesthetist, Torbay and South Devon NHS FT
This and SWAOC’s ability to deliver over half of its activity as “same day”, and with only 1% staying longer than 24 hours, has enabled the unit to achieve patient flow. This patient flow has enabled the unit to deliver highly productive results with minimal cost and, arguably more importantly, less demand on people.
Edge has already worked with GIRFT to create a dashboard that enables Trusts to track their HVLC activity. As a result, the 63 orthopaedic hubs already set up in England can identify key areas of improvement in real time that will bring their surgical outcomes in line with the high-performing SWOAC hub.
Learn more
If you are interested to learn more about Edge Health’s work on HVLC pathways, and the NOA award, please do contact us directly at [email protected].
The HSJ Partnership Awards 2022 took place to celebrate and showcase those collaborations and partnerships driving transformation and improving patient outcomes across the NHS.
Following a rigorous judging process, Kaleidoscope and Edge Health were given the award in recognition of their innovative and collaborative partnership with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough sustainability and transformation partnership (STP).
The award winning collaboration supported the delivery of a digital service to improve diabetes remission and care. Edge Health supported Kaleidoscope to work with staff and patients to identify the key areas where they could create real change. As a result of the work, three primary care networks improved their performance and more than 400 additional patients received care. The model has now been rolled out to a further four areas.
The judges said:
“The enthusiasm of all involved in the partnership was infectious and really apparent. There is potential for it to be scalable across other health systems and other long term conditions. Qualitative data for local populations gathered and captured helped understanding how to remove barriers for practices in terms of communication and supporting patients with appropriate digital mediums.”
Dave West, Health Service Journal’s Deputy Editor congratulated the teams on their successful win:
“This year’s entrants displayed a varied range of projects and partnerships, all working together to benefit the nation’s healthcare sector. The winners were chosen after considerable deliberation on many success factors, but primarily on the innovativeness and commitment to healthcare.”
Clare Allcock who led the project at Kaleidoscope said:
“A lot of what we do is about relationships and helping people work better as teams, organisations and systems. So it is particularly lovely to get this award working in collaboration with brilliant people at Edge and Cambridge and Peterborough. This was a really rewarding project but this award is the icing on a fantastic cake.”
We were at the Healthcare Excellence Through Technology show last week, and it was great to see so much interest in all of the innovators that were part of the AHSN Network’s Innovation Exchange.
At Edge Health, we have been work closely with providers and commissioners to become more efficient by using their data better. We had the opportunity to showcase a number of our innovative solutions at the event in London.
With the emergence of promising new technologies, a flood of data and increasing operational pressures, healthcare innovators face a new set of opportunities and challenges for moving from theory to practice and beyond. These will define the next decade of operational efficiency in healthcare delivery. Taking the pAIn out of AI will look at successful innovations and how they have navigated the challenges.
Edge Health has been very excited to participate and speak at the NHSR community Conference held in Birmingham, this year. The presentation mainly covered the use of R and Shiny to support operational improvements in hospitals.
The NHS-R community aims to support the learning, application, and promoting the use of R in the NHS through workshops, video tutorials. An interesting event full of enthusiasm for R and Shiny, interactive workshops and resource-sharing. An opportunity to network with like-minded people and discuss the future of R and Shiny in healthcare.
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