Multi-Specialty Outpatient Service Cuts 52-Week Waits by 65%

Medacs’ support has enabled a much faster reduction in 78-week waiting patients than the Trust’s current capacity would have allowed. Their process runs so smoothly it just feels like business as usual. Our teams now have the capacity we needed to support more two-week-wait cancer reviews.

Operational Manager, Obstetrics and Gynaecology

The Challenge

Post-pandemic, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust was facing a significant RTT backlog, with over 43,000 patients waiting for non-urgent elective operations, treatment or their first consultant-led outpatient appointment. 14% of patients on the list had been waiting longer than a year and the Trust needed a significant increase in activity to continue to keep waiting lists in line with national targets. 

The Approach

Medacs initially built a new managed outpatient service for Gastroenterology patients, with the contract quickly extended to cover the management of regular weekend clinics across four specialties, supporting Colorectal, Urology and Gynaecology, including a full clinical coding service. 

A predominantly 'local' workforce model was used, with extra out-of-hours work offered first to substantively employed consultants and nurses, and a small pool of extra clinical staff brought in to support and fill gaps. This aided continuity of care, with patients seeing the same consultant in follow-up sessions, and supported more efficient care pathways, with familiar local staff more able to easily access interlinked services. 

Results

• Medacs coordinated hundreds of extra outpatients clinics, including ‘super clinic weekends’ with up to 11 concurrent clinics running simultaneously.
  
  
• Within 12 weeks, 162 patients were cleared from the 78ww list for Gynaecology alone (50%). This enabled the Trust to divert resources to 2ww cancer reviews.
  
  
• A ‘per case’ payment structure improved productivity with at least 2 more patients added to each scheduled list.
  
  
• In total, more than 3300 patients were cleared, reducing the overall waiting list by 42% and the 52ww by 65%.
  
  
• With Medacs' support, the Trust achieved 3rd position out of 25 trusts in the first cohort of the GIRFT Further Faster programme.