Stella Vig, National Clinical Director for Elective Care NHS England, recently visited LUHFT to hear about the significant progress we’ve made in delivering elective recovery and theatre productivity improvements during the last two years.
We’ve seen a 15% increase in the number of patients through our Theatres in the first four months of this year compared to last year, which benefited 1,384 patients.
Some of the improvements we’ve made at LUHFT include the expansion of local anaesthetic surgery through a new dedicated unit at Broadgreen which benefits over 100 patients a month.
We were also the first Trust in Europe to offer patients transoral surgery for throat cancer assisted by the Da Vinci Single Port surgical robot. This robotic surgery results in better outcomes for patients, through significantly reduced lengths of stay, no feeding or tracheostomy tubes, or even the potential to reduce the need for post-operative chemotherapy.
Our Theatre teams also launched a Starting Lists on Time (SLOT) initiative which has reduced the delays we had experienced in getting patients to theatre, delivering a 7.69% improvement in surgery starting on time.
This month we’ve also opened Archie’s Place, which is a sensory suite in Theatres to support adults with additional needs and offers a calming environment prior to surgery.
During the visit Stella spent time with Beth Weston our Chief Delivery Officer, alongside improvement and Theatre productivity leads to learn about the range of changes that we’ve made as part of our improvement journey across all our sites.
She then went on a tour of the Royal hospital meeting with our clinicians in Ophthalmology, Colorectal and Urology, visiting Theatres and thanking teams for their ongoing hard work to enhance patient experience in our Theatres, improve their outcomes and reducing patient waiting times.
