Increasing capacity across our services and working in the community wherever possible

Other changes brought about through the programme relate to how we can work better to improve productivity and increase our capacity to deliver services.

Expanding our Pain service into a larger facility helped us to improve the flow of patients, increasing the number we could see in the new setting. We started discharging trauma patients via the accelerated transfer team, which had previously only been used for patients having surgery. This reduced the time orthopaedic patients had to stay in hospital, improving their recovery and allowing us to better use our facilities to treat more people. 

GPs were also a key part of our work in increasing how many patients we were able to see. They have been carrying out diagnostic endoscopies in support of hospital services, which increased the number of procedures we were able to do across the System.

This work continues, exploring more opportunities where our GPs have the skills to help challenged hospital services and treat patients in the community, avoiding the need for a hospital trip.

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