By Lauren Monaghan, Junior Local Democracy Reporter
Nottingham’s hospitals have gained the equivalent of two full wards’ worth of space by speeding up patient discharges.
Hospital bosses at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) discussed operational progress at a board meeting on Thursday (September 12).
The excess number of patients waiting to leave hospital and ‘medically safe for more than 24 hours’ has dropped by 100 since last year’s peak of more than 200.
July’s figure also reflected sustained improvement for a second month.
Lisa Kelly, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive at NUH, said: “What this means is that we’ve been able to allow more planned surgery to happen and it’s eased the pressure a bit on the emergency pathways and the occupancy in the hospital.
“There are more beds available for us to bring more patients in for their surgery or we’re able to move patients more quickly through A&E into the right ward space.
“It’s about the equivalent of about two wards less of patients that are waiting to be discharged.”
The significant drop has been achieved through cross-organisation efforts.
Ms Kelly added: “It’s through the amazing collaboration between the NHS and social care across the system, we’ve worked really closely together with community NHS colleagues and social care in both councils to get to really understand the data and used that to drive improvements in how we work together.”
Board papers note how hospital operational pressures are still being felt elsewhere despite the improvements.
They read: “While this is encouraging, the metrics persist at elevated levels and remain a root cause of several other performance issues, constraining effective hospital flow and the utilisation of our bed base to
support patients requiring acute care.
“The impact is felt across our hospitals as part of the interplay between emergency and elective pathways. Unfortunately, whilst improving recently we continue to struggle to offer patients the timely access to services in the manner that we would wish.”