Efficient Outpatient Service Doubles Productivity

Medacs has consistently delivered a supportive and reliable outpatient service, helping us to assess, see and treat patients more quickly and efficiently. Feedback from both staff and patients has been highly positive

NHS Directorate Service Manager

Background

As one of the north’s leading healthcare providers, HDFT cares for the local population in Harrogate as well as across North Yorkshire and Leeds. Their surgical wards, departments and outpatient services offer specialist assessment, care and treatment for a wide range of elective care patients. With national waiting lists for elective care reaching record highs, the Trust needed to take steps to reduce their backlog but lacked the capacity to manage the delivery of more outpatients clinics outside regular working hours. 

The Approach

Medacs built a new insourced outpatient service, initially focused on Gastroenterology. A predominantly local staffing model was chosen, with Medacs incentivising and working with the Trust’s existing consultants, nursing and administrative teams to cover additional evening and in-week clinics. Ad-hoc support was also drafted in from extra specialist clinical staff when necessary. Following positive results, the service was expanded, and Medacs Insourcing teams were contracted to manage regular weekend, evening and in-week clinics across ENT and Gastroenterology, running  both outpatient and surgical sessions.

Results

• To date, Medacs has coordinated hundreds of extra clinics for the Trust, clearing more than 2300 patients
• The average number of patients seen per outpatient clinic has increased by 50%
• 34% of outpatients are discharged with positive outcomes with significant reductions in the number referred for surgery
• The trust successfully cleared all 52-week waiting patients in line with national targets and became one of eight trusts to be awarded £2m in
• funding from NHS England in recognition of progress made reducing waiting times for elective care
• The average waiting time for Gastroenterology and ENT treatment is now under 15 weeks.