Providing additional capacity to meet changing patient demand
Mobile operating theatres enable healthcare providers to flexibly increase capacity, either to generate additional income or to manage sudden increases in demand.
By using a mobile unit, healthcare providers are able to treat more patients and therefore benefit from any increased income from the additional procedures performed.
Similarly with a sudden peak in demand, healthcare providers can ensure that the Government’s 18 week waiting list target is met and maintained without the need to off-load patients to the private sector.
Additional capacity can be achieved quickly and affordably with a Vanguard mobile unit. When compared with procuring the services from a private hospital, surgery costs are normally lower if that same procedure was carried out at the NHS hospital in a mobile unit. The unit also provides you with ownership of the patient pathway which ultimately means control of additional costs.
With a Vanguard unit, NHS patients can receive NHS care on NHS premises allowing NHS Trusts to continue to meet performance targets.
Read on to find out how Vanguard Healthcare has worked with NHS Trusts/ Health Boards and PCTs throughout the UK to provide additional surgical and treatment capacity.
Swansea NHS Trust commission Vanguard Healthcare in waiting list initiative
When current facilities are working to capacity, trying to reduce waiting times requires hospital management to think laterally and explore new innovations.
Vanguard Healthcare was brought in by Swansea NHS Trust to help clear a backlog of general surgery patients. The hospital management team needed a short-term solution to reduce waiting lists, meet Government targets and also provide vital cover while a new day surgery facility was being constructed at Singleton Hospital.
The Trust needed to facilitate an additional 40 operations a week in order to reduce waiting times. But with demand on its existing theatre capacity reaching its limit, a Vanguard Healthcare mobile theatre, supplied with theatre personnel, was brought in to service the demand.
Swansea NHS Trust became the first Trust in Wales to install a mobile operating theatre. Up to eight patients a day received surgery in the theatre, which had a covered walkway to the ground floor of the hospital.
Patients were admitted and prepared for surgery in a designated ward before being taken to the theatre for their anaesthetic and surgical procedure. They were then returned to the wards in the hospital to recuperate and to be discharged.
Andrew Bellamy, Director of Strategy and Modernisation, said: “The pattern of care was no different to surgery undertaken in our existing theatres and our own surgeons and anaesthetists were carrying out the extra sessions as a waiting list initiative.”
“It proved extremely effective as a short-term measure to help us clear waiting lists for general surgery patients. Having to perform over 40 extra operations a week is something that would not have otherwise been possible given the demand on theatre capacity.”
Many Scottish hospitals bring in Vanguard after national targets tightened
Health Boards in Scotland approached the Scottish Executive’s 18 week waiting list directive in lots of different ways. Many found it made financial sense to make use of the high-tech mobile solutions provided by Vanguard Healthcare.
Vanguard mobile units are quick to install, truly mobile, do not require planning consent and provide facilities to carry out a range of procedures.
Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen was the first Scottish hospital to use a Vanguard mobile operating theatre. A total of 150 orthopaedic operations were performed over a six week period. It provided valuable short-term assistance with waiting lists whilst work on the hospital’s fourth operating theatre was being completed.
Dr Roelf Dijkhuizen, NHS Grampian Medical Director, said: “Feedback from our surgeons, nurses and patients has been very positive. Patient care in the mobile unit does not differ from that undertaken in our existing theatres. The modular unit is attached directly to the hospital, enabling pre and post operative care in the orthopaedic wards as normal.”
NHS executives in Tayside also opted to bring in additional treatment capacity to cut waiting times and help take care closer to the patient’s home. NHS Tayside found that many patients were reluctant to travel the distance to Glasgow for treatment because of the impact on visiting relatives.
The NHS Board commissioned a mobile operating theatre to be sited at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee to create additional capacity for orthopaedic patients. During a ten week period, the unit removed more than 200 patients from the waiting list. A number of spare slots in theatre time were allocated to general surgery, ENT and plastic surgery.
Hazel Carroll, Clinical Group Director for Orthopaedics at NHS Tayside, said: “Bringing in a mobile unit satisfied patients’ desire to be treated close to home whilst also achieving waiting time targets.”
Kirklees PCT use mobile unit to cut waiting times
Kirklees Primary Care Trust commissioned a Vanguard mobile theatre to drastically reduce waiting times for day case patients who required day case dermatology, plastic surgery and podiatric surgery treatments.
Situated at Holme Valley Memorial Hospital, the unit had a large clinical area comprising an anaesthetic room, operating theatre and two-bay first-stage recovery. Vanguard also supplied theatre nurses and operating department practitioners to assist the NHS surgeons in delivering the procedures.
Chief Executive Mike Potts, from Kirklees PCT, said: “It is excellent news that Kirklees PCT is one of the first PCTs in the country to use this ground-breaking service and it will be of great benefit to patients in reducing their wait for these treatments. In accordance with the NHS Plan, this is one of the ways in which the PCT is looking to provide services that were previously only available in an acute setting closer to home.”
Patients in North Devon experience a reduction in waiting times thanks to Vanguard
Vanguard’s mobile facilities significantly reduced waiting times for patients awaiting operations in North Devon.
A mobile operating theatre situated at North Devon District Hospital in Barnstable was used by the NHS Trust for eye surgery, hernia repairs and joint injections for orthopaedic patients.
Jo Gibb, Trust Director of Operations, said: “We needed a temporary theatre to help us bring down waiting times. The Vanguard mobile theatre fitted the bill exactly. We were very pleased with it. Our staff are happy and the patients think it’s fantastic.”
The contract also saw Vanguard supply an adjoining mobile ward so that patients could have surgery and recover without having to leave the unit.
Mary Smallbone, Director of Sales and Operations for Vanguard Healthcare said: “It’s critical for any hospital manager to effectively manage capacity but, with shortening waiting times for many operations now prescribed by the Government, and Trusts/Health Boards are under pressure to meet their 18-week referral-to-treatment targets, getting the required number of procedures undertaken on budget and to deadline can be challenging for even the most efficient Trust.”
“That is where the dedicated, specialist extra capacity of the sort we can provide comes in; and indeed we are working throughout the UK and Ireland to help Trusts meet their targets.”
