ICS Update December 2021

Exploring the elective recovery challenge

The government anticipates 30% more elective activity by 2024-25. For NHS organisations and ICSs already battling significant waiting list backlogs, this adds to an existing challenge.

In our final In Conversation With of 2021, Liaison Workforce’s Ed Leonardo spoke with Suzanne Tracey, Chief Executive of the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, to gain an insight into how the system is addressing the challenge of returning elective recovery to pre-pandemic levels. Here, we pick out three key areas explored in the conversation…

1. The effective use of data system-wide
   

On looking at the current position of elective care across the system, Suzanne described how effective data, and its use, was helping to establish needs and capacity: “Having that collective understanding of where the focus is and what the objectives are is helped by having the data to support it.

“We’ve found that we’re quite good at having the data on an individual organisation point of view, but bringing that together to create a system picture that we can all look at across the system has been a real piece of work. Having that view for the whole system and being able to understand where your areas or hot spots are, almost irrespective of which organisation, has been a really important lesson for us.”

2. The challenge for the workforce

Since Ed and Suzanne’s conversation, analysis has been published by the HSJ for the three-month period to September 2021, which showed that the twelve systems in receipt of additional ‘accelerator’ funding, which was given to boost elective care to beyond pre-pandemic levels, delivered fewer inpatient and day case procedures than they did in the same period in 2019.

Suzanne reflects on this difficulty, describing how, despite the additional funding, one of the challenges in delivering elective care was the summer’s wave of Covid cases and the effect that the ongoing pandemic was having on workforces: “I think there’s a degree of nervousness from our teams about what the winter holds. They’ve seen a really difficult summer and they’re thinking that it will get worse again in the winter, and the resilience of staff – understandably – is lower. They’ve been working non-stop, and are under a lot of pressure, and that workload seems to be taking its toll.”

Ed goes on to ask Suzanne where she’d spend a fictional pot of money if presented with it: “I’d like to spend some money on really supporting our staff. For all of the reasons we’ve said in this conversation – resilience is lower, morale is lower, people are really struggling at the moment – I look at the facilities that people are working in, in most hospitals I think, and staff space to rest and recuperate is at a real premium.”

3. The need for digital transformation

As ICSs begin to look to work more collaboratively across broader geography, the need for innovative and adaptable solutions is apparent. Suzanne states: “It’s really clear that we can’t carry on delivering services in the way we’ve always done so, we simply don’t have enough staff and need to train more, and we’re trying to make the best use of the staff we’ve got, so the most important thing for me that the NHS can do at the moment is increase significantly in digital capability.”

To hear more of the insight provided by Suzanne on how Royal Devon & Exeter is addressing the challenge of elective recovery, please visit https://inconversationwith.liaisongroupold.com/ to watch our latest In Conversation With video.