Surgical Hub Case Study in the Midlands
The Details
Long Wait
In the Midlands the challenge to cut waiting lists is substantial.
The statistics speak for themselves: as of December 2022, 30,396 patients were waiting for more than a year whilst 111,567 patients were on the elective waiting list.
Low Utilisation Rate
In August 2022 the surgical hub unit was running at 70% utilisation.
Collaboration
We worked collaboratively with the Trust in difficult circumstances, having direct conversations with the theatre management team around session utilisation to identify reasons for lack of use.
A higher-level meeting with the senior divisional operations team gave a further understanding on our side on how we could curate our offering to their needs.
Hybrid Support
18WS created a partnership with the Trust to create hybrid teams, where 18WS brought in teams of highly experienced theatre clinicians and onboarded the Trust’s own consultants.
Clinical Excellence
On each list we maximised both clinical excellence and the number of patients who could be safely treated, 99.9% of our patients rate the quality of our service very good and 99.9% are likely to recommend our service.
Our Results
Between October and December 22, the utilisation of the surgical hub unit increased from 69% to 87%.
We worked hard to improve efficiency with a focus on theatre turnaround times and productivity, achieving 7 minutes vs 24 minutes that the Trust was achieving on average, a 71% efficiency gain.
We saw a total of 536 patients during those three months across General Surgery, Radiology and Vascular.
+71%
Efficiency gain in theater turnaround times
+26%
Increase in theatre utilisation
99.9%
Average patient satisfaction
Testimonial
Ian Stafford“We’ve been heavily involved with helping the trust clear their backlog and there has been a huge uplift in the number of patients treated. Since August the trusts surgical hub on the site has seen a 26% increase in session utilisation, demonstrating the enormous positive impact that insourcing is having”.
Director of Nursing & Performance at 18WS
Meet our Clinical Leadership Team
Mr Charles Imber
Clinical Lead for General SurgeryMr Charles Imber is the Consultant Hepatobiliary Pancreatic Surgeon at the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust and the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH). He is also Clinical Lead in Liver Transplantation at the Royal Free Hospital in London, where he performs liver transplant surgery as well as HPB surgery. He is also Consultant Surgeon at The Princess Grace Hospital. He is a member of the London Sarcoma service based at UCH and in charge of the National Organ Retrieval Service (NORS) for the North London region. He performed the first robotic liver resection and the first robotic pancreatic resections in the UK successfully and is a pioneer in this form of minimally invasive complex abdominal surgery.
Ruth Parry
General Surgery Lead NurseHer background is almost 20 years as an Operating Department Practitioner. Experienced in Scrub, anaesthetics and recovery. She also worked briefly in ITU during the pandemic. She has worked in NHS trusts in England and Wales. She also did a secondment as a Corporate Education Advisor for an NHS trust and previous to becoming an ODP I was a Quality Engineer.
Dovlar Cinco
Surgery and Orthopaedics Lead NurseDov is an experienced Scrub nurse with over 12 years experience in theatres, specialising in Trauma and Orthopaedics. He has worked in various hospitals in both the NHS and private sector. With his wealth of knowledge and experience, he utilises it in delivering safe and excellent care to our patients as well as employ efficiency and continuous improvement to ensure positive productivity. He also has experience in quality improvement and has worked with NHSE in various theatre utilisation projects. He also has experience in Human factors training and is a faculty member of a team delivering human factors training in theatre.
