Helping the NHS return to business post-COVID.
06-Apr-2020: During lock-down, the Res Consortium Senior Team has been designing initiatives to return routine NHS are back to normal operating activity as soon as pressure from the pandemic subsides. At this point their will be a significant backlog of planned episodes of care that will need to be progressed. During the pandemic all Trusts were placed on Block Contract to avoid unwarranted penalties being applied to providers as they change their activities to respond to the challenges of the pandemic. When normal business resumes, Trusts will need to be agile enough to return to delivering against their contracts as soon as possible, in order to recover effectively from the impact of the pandemic on the organisation. Professional resources may again need to be redeployed to reduce waiting times in key specialties, especially cancer and cardiac surgeries that may have been delayed as services struggled to cope under COVID-19 demand and cross-infection risk. Agile wards, rapid assessment and discharge protocols and special lists may all need to be considered to clear the backlog of demand. Ensuring the right people receive care first when the system begins to function again will mean outpatient triage may be done remotely. Electronic systems like the Manchester Gateway will need to be developed and deployed quickly to enable specialist to bring high-priority patients into the system first, while providing alternative or interim support to those not in need of such urgent or immediate care. Communication technology will have been transformed in the NHS as a result of the pandemic, so that now routine outpatient or GP appointments can be had over the telephone or a secure video conference line in the first instance. Understanding who would benefit most from this new type of consultation with improve access for all patients, something 111 services are already skilled at providing. As hospitals struggle to manage demand while clearing the backlog created by the pandemic, there may be an opportunity for GP Federations to develop commissioning business cases for specific out-of-hospital procedures being performed in Primary Care. Pressure for space on surgical lists will be high when ‘business-as-usual’ returns to the NHS. This means Trusts may be looking to safely increase the scope of day surgery for people that would ordinarily require admission due to operational issues rather than clinical risk. By re-appropriating space for 23 hour nurse supported discharge, day surgery hours could be extended to accommodate patients that would ordinarily require a longer recovery period.