Important Update on Re-Starting Elective Surgery NHS England Recording Now Available on Spotify

The input from the Panellists on Wednesday's Device Access Webinar is a must listen to for the MedTech industry eager to understand when and how to re-engage with NHS Hospitals.

The session began with an overview of the size of the elective issue facing NHS Hospitals in England, with analysis below from Michael Branagan-Harris CEO from Device Access, demonstrating the typical historic monthly activity by speciality, then by waiting list data demonstrating the existing wait list, then a combination of both demonstrating additional wait for patients, assuming activity returns by July 2020.

Monthly Finished Consultant Episodes Admitted Patient Care - NHS England

Top 10 Monthly Elective Treatments - NHS England

Number of weeks waited for treatment - Estimating additional additional wait.

1.6M Patients Waiting for Treatment - Feb 2020 - NHS England

NHS England would need to increase cases by an estimated 283,817 to maintain pre Covid 19 shut down 18-week target.

Professor Timothy Briggs discussed his work on how Operating Theatres could improve efficiency.

Hospitals could carry out over 291,000 more routine operations, like hip replacements and cataract surgeries, a year by improving how they schedule their surgical lists. 

Data submitted by 92 trusts for the year January to December 2017 demonstrated variation in theatre productivity between different trusts and different specialties. Specific findings included:

• A third of operating lists started 30 minutes or more late and 38% finished 30 minutes or more early. More than 111,000 finished at least 60 minutes early. Day lists comprising three four-hour sessions were particularly likely to finish early.
• Theatre time lost to late starts, early finishes and delays between operations could potentially have been used by the 92 trusts to do up to 291,327 more operations (a 16.8% increase), had they been able to address their main causes.

For the eight highest volume surgical specialties reviewed, this would have meant around:

• 30,000 more ear, nose and throat operations
• 42,000 more general surgery operations
• 32,000 more gynaecology operations
• 41,000 more ophthalmology operations
• 27,000 more oral and maxillofacial surgery operations
• 19,000 more plastic surgery operations
• 57,000 more orthopaedic operations
• 44,000 more urology operations

This NHS Improvement report in PDF is available to download here

If you would like to discuss how Device Access can help you re-engage with the NHS and understand the waiting list volumes by NHS Hospital, please reach out to us - by visiting the Device Access Website or by email info@deviceaccess.co.uk

The Recording of the webinar is now FREE and available from Spotify on the Device Access UK Channel.

Data Source NHS Digital