By Lauren Monaghan, Junior Local Democracy Reporter
Sherwood Forest Hospitals has cut its waiting times for planned treatment, with some classes of long-wait cases being eliminated at the end of June.
The board of Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust, which runs King’s Mill Hospital, Mansfield Community Hospital and Newark Hospital, discussed the issue as part of a meeting today (August 1).
The trust says it experienced an intense period of demand between April and the end of June, only for this to be exacerbated by strike action.
The rate of people attending the trust’s A&E departments was 11 per cent above expected during this time.
Ambulance arrivals in June also reached some of their highest levels recorded.
Junior doctors’ strikes impacted trust staff’s ability to deliver planned care, particularly in outpatients, with various medical staff members being redeployed to support urgent and emergency care.
However, the trust managed to still work on its backlog of patient cases during this time.
By the end of June, 78-week wait patient cases were completely eliminated, with 65-week waits also on target to disappear by the end of September.
Ambulance handover times remained performing as one of the best in the country, with the trust being in the top 10 nationally for handovers of less than 30 minutes and being the only in England with zero handovers above 60 minutes in May and June.
Rachel Eddie, Chief Operating Officer, said: “We’ve got very strong medical same-day emergency care which is above the national standard.
“It’s a very positive step in terms of what we can do in controlling that admission demand.”
A new CT scanner towards the end of the year will help address a backlog of people waiting for these scans.
She added: “When that comes in that will clear our CT and cardio backlog within a very very short space of time.”
