Our strategic approach to clinical services is focussed on three main areas:
We have started to develop our thinking about a future clinical strategy for the region. Working with the ICB, NENC Providers is taking a lead role to develop the strategic approach to acute hospital care. This includes both secondary care and tertiary specialist services.
To support this, we have:
- Held our first event to bring all FTs together to talk about how, as a collective of providers, we start to address quality and sustainability issues and reduce variation in patient outcomes.
- Completed an early analysis to understand the individual abilities, challenges, and aspirations of every FT in the region.
- Completed a mapping exercise of the clinical synergies and co-dependencies between providers as well as the clinical service strengths, vulnerabilities and opportunities for future collaboration.
- Appointed a Clinical Lead, Dr Chris Snowdon, to drive forward this work in partnership with all NENC Providers and the ICB.
This early groundwork means we now have a more detailed and shared understanding of how acute clinical services are set up at hospitals across the region. This will help us to collectively maximise strengths, mitigate weaknesses and seize the opportunities for the biggest areas of innovation and improvement.
Our long-term goal is to co-produce a plan that will ensure our acute clinical services are set up well for the future. We will involve all partners, patients, staff and the public as we do this. We want to provide the very highest quality of care in a fair and equal way for everyone.
Our strategic approach to clinical services has also involved thinking about how we strengthen and improve the way our various clinical networks operate.
We have undertaken work to map and understand all the different clinical networks (CNs) and operational delivery networks (ODNs) that exist across the region, many of which are already hosted by FTs in the region.
Moving forward, the region’s ODNs will be aligned to the Provider Collaborative to ensure there is better consistency in the support offer for networks and clear lines of accountability for decision making.
Working with the ICB, our collective aim is to maximise opportunities, through the various networks, to share expertise and best practice and keep driving forward quality improvements.
Through the Provider Collaborative, we support conversations between providers where there are challenges in certain specialty areas across the region. This includes, for example, Urology, Maxillofacial Surgery and Pain Management where we face unique workforce challenges.
We also support wider stakeholder discussions on regional issues and challenges. This includes, for example, the urgent transformation of non-surgical oncology services across the region which included the implementation of temporary changes impacting all NENC Providers.
Repatriation of Patients...
In February, we launched a set of shared principles for all FTs in the region around the repatriation of patients. These principles outline how providers should work together when there is a need to safely refer and repatriate patients closer to home if they need to stay longer in hospital. All FTs have signed up to this way of working across the NENC Provider Collaborative.
Our ‘repatriation principles’ aim to ensure patients can be closer to their home, family, friends and/or carers. They also aim to ensure providers always have capacity for further emergency or specialist admissions for people who need to come into hospital.
By working collaboratively between providers, this means patients will have seamless access to care and transfer back to their local hospital.
“Repatriation’ is how we describe the need to transfer a patient under the care of one NHS Foundation Trust to another. Patients can often end up receiving hospital-based care in a location that is not their local hospital or close to where they live. This maybe because of the specialist nature of their care, or the fact that they were admitted in an emergency or at a time of pressure.”
Support for Great North Air Ambulance Service...
During the year we helped to champion and facilitate discussions with all NENC Providers about the need for 24/7 consultant cover to support the ongoing and future delivery of the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNASS).
This follows a peer review of all prehospital trauma services across the region which identified a gap around the lack of consistent 24/7 access to senior clinicians for GNASS. All acute Trusts across the region have been involved with this work and in particular North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.
The proposals, supported by the Provider Collaborative, will now more forward to ensure that all patients have equal access to getting the right clinical treatment and outcomes, by the right team, at the right time.
