The Future Hospital development site team at Worthing Hospital are working to improve care for frail and elderly patients by reducing the number of transfers of care they experience in hospital and beyond.
Standardising clinical pathways
In order to improve care for frail and older patients, Worthing Hospital’s project team set out to standardise clinical pathways for emergency admissions. The multidisciplinary team, made up of clinicians, nurses and patients are committed to putting patients and their needs at the centre of their work.
The Worthing team provide an update on 18 months of collaboration with the FHP.
Successes
- A&E targets: the trust achieved the 95% target for A&E throughout the year. It was placed within the top 4 performing trusts in the UK for this metric.
- Length of stay: there has been an overall reduction in length of stay. Patients admitted under the surgical team are experiencing the most substantial reduction of 1.3 days.
- CQC review: in 2016, Worthing received an ‘outstanding’ rating in their recent CQC report.
Patient experience is valued as much as clinical effectiveness
Challenges
- Bed availability: on occasion, transfers of care have been delayed due to limited bed availability on the base wards. This has also caused issues with monitoring patient flow.
- Increased admissions: the hospital continues to see more patients, with a 5% increase in admissions in the last 12 months.
- Rota gaps: there are frequent gaps on specialist registrar and core training rotas due to vacancies.