There was encouraging news from Bucks NHS Trust following recommendations made by the Keogh review earlier this year.
A meeting this month found that there had been “real progress” in the Trust’s efforts to improve the quality of care it provides. Representatives from NHS England, Trust Development Authority, Care Quality Commission and local Clinical Commissioning Groups, and staff from Buckinghamshire Healthcare were able to detail a number of initiatives and developments that are now in place to help improve care and the patient experience.
These include:
- Additional doctors working at the weekend in Stoke Mandeville Hospital, ensuring a daily review by a senior clinician of every emergency patient admitted over the weekend;
- Recruiting almost 70 nurses to fill vacancies on wards, with plans to recruit even more doctors and nurses over the coming weeks and months ;
- Establishing a dedicated phoneline for healthcare professionals in community services to access GP support more quickly out-of-hours;
- Opening a new Acute Medical Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, seeing patients referred by their GP for urgent care or transferred from Wycombe Hospital. The unit enables these patients to bypass the A&E front-door, reducing their wait and improving their experience, as well as freeing-up capacity in the main A&E department; and
- Installing new dashboards outside every ward so patients and visitors can easily see how well it is performing in key areas such as infection control, falls and the patient experience.
In addition, Trust also provided details about the ‘Big Conversation’ it is having with local patients, actively listening and engaging them to share their views and ideas on how it can continue to improve the patient experience.
Participants at the summit agreed that significant progress had been made since the Keogh review team had visited the Trust, with all areas of concern being addressed.
Nigel Acheson, Medical Director for NHS England in the South, who led the Keogh review of the Trust, said:
The Trust has clearly demonstrated that it has worked hard to address the concerns raised by the review and introduced a number of specific initiatives to improve the quality of the service provided to their local patients.
I congratulate everyone who has worked hard to make this improvement possible.
