Delivery of the 18 week RTT pathway by December 2008 has been an enormous achievement for the NHS. A greater challenge now faces us: sustaining performance for every pathway (not just organisational aggregates) within limited resource and delivering wider service improvement that ensures high quality care and a better patient experience. NHS Elect’s work in this area is divided into two areas: the support we offer our members and the support we continue to offer the Department of Health’s continuing ‘end waiting’ programme, in particular, musculoskeletal services.
NHS Elect’s support to its members to help them sustain short waits and deliver high quality care for all.
We help members to identify how they could improve and streamline services and then work with members to implement the necessary changes to make these improvements happen. We recognise that the needs of each local health community will be different and for this reason we tailor our work to the specific needs of our members. The following gives an idea of what shape this support might take.
In the Members’ Area you will find the following information:
- NHS Elect network events to share and learn from other members
- Network seminars. Topics include delivering 18 weeks, efficiency and productivity in pathways and improving orthopaedic services
- A new offering this year is a workshop designed to offer support to members in continued delivery of the A&E targets
- Fast tracking national learning (e.g. the NHS Institute Productive Theatres programme and the work of the British Association of Day Surgery) to the membership
- On-site support provided by NHS Elect to review and improve service delivery
- 18 week workshops
- Reviews of current service models
- Programme to support clinical change
- Work on organisational development
- A resource library of documents and links for service improvement
NHS Elect’s support of the Department of Health’s 'end waiting' programme
NHS Elect has an ongoing agreement with the Department of Health (DH) to provide continued support to the DH in its NHS-facing work, particularly in musculoskeletal services.
To date, NHS Elect has provided the following support to the ‘end waiting’ programme:
- Working with the 18 week Pioneer and Early Achiever sites to facilitate shared learning and the implementation of sustainable models of care to meet 18 weeks.
- Project management for the creation of many of the 18 week commissioning pathways which have been developed to help local health communities transform their services and meet 18 weeks.
- 18 week orthopaedic project including completion and launch of The Musculoskeletal Services Framework – a joint responsibility: doing it differently, support to the 18 week orthopaedic coordinating group and spinal taskforce and for the SHA orthopaedic road shows.
More information about the Department of Health’s 18 week programme can be found at www.18weeks.nhs.uk
NHS Elect’s work on Sustaining 18 weeks and our wider programme on service improvement is lead by Eilis Parker. Please contact Eilis Parker if you wish to explore this area further.