ELHT is trialling ways to increase capacity on their wards and reduce A&E waiting times at the beginning of the week following busy weekends. This is linked to a national initiative called the ‘Monday Surge Programme’ led by NHS Improvement and which the Trust has been participating in.
Tony McDonald, Deputy Director of Operations for the Trust explained:
“Less people are discharged from hospital over the weekend then between Monday and Friday. There are a number of reasons for this but it means that we have less beds readily available when new patients require them at the beginning of the new week.
“This also impacts on waiting times in our A&E. This is why it is really important for us to try new ways of ensuring that as many discharges as possible are still happening over a weekend.”
“We have just run a ‘Super Sunday Discharge Event’ where we had similar procedures and teams in place on Sunday to what we normally have during the weekdays, to support patient flow, discharge planning and increased discharges from a number of wards. This included dedicated patient flow coordinators attached to each team.”
“As a consequence of the efforts of these teams and other partner organisations working with patients and families we achieved approximately 25 more discharges on Sunday than normal - about the equivalent of one whole ward. This is hugely successful and my thanks to everyone involved.”