NHS Providers showcases extraordinary innovation of NHS

A new report from NHS Providers is highlighting examples of the outstanding work and innovation of NHS frontline staff to restore services for non coronavirus patients.

A series of briefings over the coming months will set out in detail how trusts and staff are working to raise levels of routine care despite the continuing threat from coronavirus, and the need to prepare for additional winter pressures.

Amongst the examples of resilience and resourcefulness that served the NHS so well at the height of the pandemic, NHS Provider’s highlights the restoration of cancer screening and treatment services at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge by compressing treatment times when it was safe to do so, and a new drive-through lung function testing system at Luton and Dunstable Hospital Foundation Trust.

The organisation stresses that the claim that all non-coronavirus care are coming to a grinding halt are simply not true, saying that, at the peak of the pandemic, for every one coronavirus patient in hospital there were two non-coronavirus patients being treated for other conditions.

Trusts and frontline staff are now working flat out to restore those services which were necessarily interrupted, in many cases doing so in the context of a range of coronavirus related constraints that, for some trusts, have meant the loss of up to 30 per cent of their normal capacity.

These constraints include: loss of waiting room and/or bed capacity due to social distancing in acute, mental health and community settings; loss of surgical and patient facing time in all settings due to the need to wear and change, with appropriate frequency, cumbersome personal protective equipment; loss of access to diagnostic testing equipment and other physical equipment due to the need for deeper and more frequent cleaning between patient treatments; loss of bed space and access levels to diagnostic equipment; and limitations on ambulance trust capacity due to the need for deep cleaning vehicles.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: "Much of the public commentary over the last few months has focused on how far NHS activity has fallen. Very little of it has focused on how hard NHS frontline staff are working to recover services and how rapidly they are succeeding. Every trust leader recognises that Covid-19 has forced the delay of some treatments to patients and that this has significant impact for patients and their families. No-one underestimates the huge challenge this poses for the NHS.

"But we also owe it to frontline NHS staff to recognise their hard work, their ingenuity and their persistence in overcoming a set of wicked constraints – lost beds, lost patient and surgical time, lost diagnostic test slots – because of the unavoidable need to protect patients from Covid-19.

"As our new briefing shows, frontline staff are working just as hard, and being just as innovative, as they were in the first Covid-19 peak earlier this year. Chief executives tell us that they are recovering activity levels significantly faster than they were expecting to, just two or three months ago. Trust leaders worry that the current unrelenting focus on what the NHS is unable to do, as opposed to how rapidly it is recovering services, is also discouraging patients from coming forward to seek help when they need it.

"The NHS is there for all patients, whatever their need. Trusts are going as fast as they can to treat the same number of patients as they were before the pandemic hit, despite the constraints they face. Our new project will shine a light on some of the incredible things trusts are doing up and down the country to make this happen."