North Cumbria Integrated Care Demand and Capacity Support

Optimising capacity through elective hubs

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS FT (NCIC) is currently preparing to operationalise an integrated elective hub at their existing hospital site. These surgical hubs are ringfenced environments for performing high volume, low complexity (HVLC) surgical procedures in a streamlined fashion. By separating these procedures out from other services the hospital provides, disruption to elective procedure capacity due to competition over resources (such as beds and theatre space) can be avoided. These hubs lead to 11% fewer cancellation rates which improve patient experience and operational capacity.  Additionally, by having  together skills and expertise of staff under one roof, hospitals increase HVLC procedure volume by 21.9% [1], saving money for hospitals, and reducing elective backlogs. This avoids long patient waiting times which are negatively associated with patient outcomes.

Configurating a hub correctly is key to unlocking these operational and clinical benefits. To do this, providers need to understand their service specific requirements and implement best practices as outlined by the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme.

Building a flexible demand and capacity model to configure NCIC’s elective hub

To support NCIC in configuring their elective hub, our team developed a comprehensive demand and capacity model using waitlist, theatre and bed data. The model quantified HVLC demand by specialty, and the associated theatre and bed requirement to operate the hub. Our model was flexible, allowing senior management at NCIC to adjust underlying assumptions to analyse various scenarios.

How data driven decision making unlocked the full potential of the hub.

Using the outputs of the demand and capacity analysis, NCIC now has a clear understanding of how best to configure the elective hub and the benefits that would be unlocked in doing so. Driven by our approach and the model’s ability to process various proposed scenarios, it provides a detailed view of the capacity required to handle HVLC procedures in these specialties, enabling the Trust to plan resources, staffing, and the allocation of theatre space and beds more effectively.

We also partnered closely with their internal analytics team that is now able to take this work forward, which will allow the Trust to hit the ground running and realise the clinical, operational and financial benefits of their hub.