Directors of North Cumbria Integrated Care gathered in the Cumberland Infirmary Hospital boardroom on Wednesday to take decisions about the NHS trust’s services.
And the board heard that improvements are being seen in two of the trust’s priority areas: Referral to Treatment pathways and waits for cancer treatment.
Patients waiting 65 weeks for treatment from the point of referral reduced to 10 in December from 32 in November, while 52 week waiters reduced from 1,447 in November to 1,183 in December.
A West Cumberland Hospital ward. (Image: Stuart Walker)
The number of patients waiting more than 62 days for cancer treatment has also fallen from 641 in September to 341 in December.
Interim Chief Executive Trudie Davies said: “You’ll see our performance in here, a high performing organisation is one where the staff are engaged and committed to the workforce and we can see that our performance is starting to improve.”
SUBSCRIBE TO SUPPORT TRUSTED LOCAL JOURNALISM
She told the board that further improvements in the data are expected and “that is down to a lot of hard work from a lot of people.”
NHS bosses are continuing their efforts to put “the right plans and the right approach” in place but “not everything happens overnight, things take time, things take engagement.”
The entrance to the developing Urgent Treatment Centre in Carlisle. (Image: NCIC)
Ms Davies said that a focus is needed on improving the trust’s Urgent and Emergency Care services.
Executive Medical Director, Doctor Adrian Clements said: “Hopefully by this time next year, we will have transformed our Emergency Care offer and we’ll be getting much closer to constitutional standards and the experience of patients coming through our non-elective pathway will be far enhanced than what they are now.
“I think we are very positive around cancer and RTT from what I’ve been looking at. Many of the building blocks are there and we just need to enact it.
“But unplanned care, we’ve got our new Unplanned Care Board and I’ve had two opportunities to chair that board, we had a packed room so we’ve got really good engagement from our clinicians and our managements and our nurse leaders on how we’re going to do something different.”
Dr Adrian Clements, Executive Medical Director at NCIC. (Image: NCIC)
Dr Clements said: “We all recognise where we are now is not acceptable, but we need to give our clinicians on the ground the tools to do the job, yesterday’s unplanned care meeting was really positive, we are really looking at addressing how we manage flow through our organisation, how can we prioritise and put patients in the right part of our organisation.
“Some of the key enablers to make that work consistently aren’t yet in place, so our Urgent Treatment Centre, which is growing and near completion, needs to be fully staffed and operationally active to take some patients out of our Emergency Department and reduce crowding.”
NCIC is developing a UTC, which will provide urgent care for minor injuries and illnesses, next to the Cumberland Infirmary’s A&E department.
Dr Clements said that the “most encouraging thing” from Unplanned Care meetings, was that staff are receptive to change and working differently.
“I have absolute confidence that through this year, our performance will inclemently improve but to be truthful, I think we won’t see the finished picture until later on this year and we need to be honest about that, incremental improvements will occur.”