The Challenge
As one of the north’s leading healthcare providers, Harrogate District NHS Foundation Trust cares for the local population in Harrogate as well as across North Yorkshire and Leeds. Their surgical wards, departments and outpatient services offer specialist assessment, care and treatment for a wide range of elective care patients.
At the end of 2022, national waiting lists for elective care reached a record high. The Trust needed to take steps to reduce their backlog but lacked the capacity to manage the delivery of more outpatients clinics outside regular working hours.
Solutions
Medacs built a new insourced outpatients service, initially focused on Gastroenterology. A predominantly local staffing model was chosen, with Medacs incentivising the Trust’s existing consultants and working collaboratively with existing nursing and administrative teams to cover additional evening and in-week clinics. Ad-hoc support was also drafted in from extra specialist clinical staff when necessary.
Following positive results, the service was expanded, and Medacs Insourcing teams now manage regular weekend, evening and in-week clinics across three specialties, also supporting ENT and Gynaecology patients in outpatient and elective surgery settings.
Results
To date, Medacs has coordinated hundreds of extra outpatients clinics, clearing more than 1000 patients. On average, 50% more patients are now seen per clinic with 34% discharged with positive outcomes. Data from weekend outpatient clinics also indicates significant reductions in the number of patients referred for surgery and DNAs (both now less than 1% of all patients listed).
The Trust has now treated all Gastroenterology patients likely to breach 52-week waits by March 2025 in line with national targets. The average waiting time for Gastroenterology is now 15 weeks and the Trust is looking forward to seeing similar positive outcomes for ENT and Gynaecology.
