Planned care transformation
Care that is planned in advance is known as planned care, or elective care. Nationally, the NHS is experiencing significant pressure and unprecedented levels of demand for elective care, with around 1.7 million patients referred for planned consultant-led treatment each month. See our current waiting times here.
Timely access to high quality elective care is a key priority under the NHS Constitution. The redesign of planned care services is a must for every local health and care system. This is supported by a range of recommendations made in the national NHS Long Term Plan on the transformation of services.
In Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, a number of large-scale care transformation programmes are underway or planned. These are to review some of the services and develop new and improved ways of working. This includes looking at different and better ways of providing care and appointments, help identify people’s needs sooner and focus on staying well, and move some services out of hospital into our communities.
The vision
The vision, linked to the national NHS Long Term Plan, is to ensure that people are seen by the right person, in the right place, and at the right time.
This will provide an improved experience of care services, enrich what is available in people’s local communities, make sure we are getting the absolute best and most out of our available resource, and allow our acute hospitals to focus on caring for those who are seriously ill or who need surgery or specialist treatment from experts.
What are we doing?
We have a number of planned care transformation programmes underway including:
- Outpatients Transformation
- Mental Health Transformation
- Maternity and Midwifery Transformation
- Eye Care Transformation
- Musculoskeletal Services Transformation
- Cancer Transformation
- Local and Community Care Transformation
Other large programmes of work underway to help support and enable these new ways of working including Workforce Transformation, and IT & Digital Transformation, as well as a whole system review of the estate and space that is available and how it is being used.
Some other planned care reviews and redesign pieces of work also underway include Audiology, Neurology, Teledermatology and Cardiology.
To find out more about some of these programmes and projects, please visit our Get Involved pages.
We are also working towards the implementation of a number of recommendations made by the Midlands Elective Delivery Programme (MEDP) and Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT), spanning pre-hospital, in-hospital, and post-hospital pathways & processes. This includes elements such as elective hubs (where possible), different approaches to surgery, and maximising the use and efficiency of our theatre capacity.