Sheffield hospitals working to cut waiting times for ambulances

Sandi Carman, assistant chief executive of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs both the Royal Hallamshire and Northern General Hospitals, said that the trust is working with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service in order to streamline the system.

The NHS trust presented its annual quality report yesterday (June 6) at a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s health scrutiny sub-committee.

Committee chair Coun Ruth Milsom asked her what is being done to minimise patient waiting times and ambulances waiting around.

Ms Carman told councillors: “We are working really hard with Yorkshire Ambulance Service to enable flow through the organisation, from A&E to safe discharge of patients.”

Trust quality director Angela Legge said they are looking at how to speed up the process when several ambulances arrive at hospital at once, so that nobody is waiting more than 45 minutes outside.

She said: “We are not quite there yet. Can we just get some of the patients who are okay to come off into another space and can we also discharge patients on the ward so that the bed becomes available sooner?”

Referrals

A discharge lounge has been set up at the Northern General Hospital, near where ambulances arrive, so that staff arriving to take patients home don’t have to spend time visiting wards.

Coun Milsom raised the issue of GP patient referrals for suspected cancer.

She said: “There’s been quite a dramatic drop-off of performance since 2021, down 39 per cent for GP referrals. Even in 2021 that was quite a long way off national standards.”

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Coun Milsom said that there had also been a drop-off in cancer screening.

Ms Carman responded: “It does give us a lot of concern. It’s not a position we want to be in and it’s a concern for the patients and their families.”

She said that a reasonably high percentage of cases don’t have cancer and the aim is to establish that as quickly as possible so that patients don’t have to spend a long time worrying about it.

Restrictions

She said the trust is prioritising patients who have waited the longest. A focus group chaired by the chief executive is looking at the issue.

Maternity services, which had been rated ‘inadequate’ in 2022 by the Care Quality Commission, are continuing to improve and restrictions on services that had been put in place by inspectors had been lifted again, councillors heard.

Ms Legge said that the hard work of staff, whose numbers were increased, had been reflected in more positive feedback from users of the service, based at the Jessop Wing of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. “Whilst we’re never complacent and we’re really clear there’s more work to do, overall we’re pleased with the improvement,” she said.

One key improvement to services is a new orthopaedic centre for non-emergency surgery at the Royal Hallamshire. This has created additional theatre and clinic capacity, which has involved recruiting more staff, helping to reduce waiting lists.

The trust encourages innovation by running Dragon’s Den-style events, where staff pitch ideas to improve care. These can attract grants of up to £25,000 to help develop ideas.

One idea that won was a hospital gown without the big gap down the back.