Care ‘traffic control’ centres to speed up discharge, extended ambulance hours and extra beds are part of wide-ranging plans to prepare for Winter across the South East.
The robust new measures, announced by the NHS this week, will boost capacity and resilience across the region, as well as building on the recent improvements in ambulance response times and A&E performance.
Winter preparations have been well underway since the publication of the NHS’s Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan, with over 800 new ambulances nationally set to be in place to deliver 3.4million more ambulance road hours as well as 5,000 more sustainable hospital beds and hundreds of new virtual wards each month.
The South East has made significant progress in reducing handover delays seeing a decrease of 18% on this time last year to 9% (over 30 minutes). This means there are more ambulances on the road available and able to respond to 999 calls.
Vaughan Lewis, Regional Medical Director for NHS South East, said:
“Preparing for winter can never be done too early and is vital in ensuring the NHS in the South East can deliver timely, high quality services for patients.
“There have been many lessons learnt from previous winters and this year’s planning will set us in good stead for the winter ahead. We’ve seen significant and unprecedented pressures in recent years which have taught us to be prepared for the unknowns. These robust new measures will help support the NHS in the South East to boost capacity and resilience across the region, and to continue to build on recent improvements in ambulance response times and A&E performance.”
NHS Providers across the region have already established a range of interventions as part of the Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan to meet the potential challenges and needs of their population. In the region, virtual wards are a key component of Urgent and Emergency Care planning and since launching in May 2022, nearly 50,000 patients have been admitted onto a Virtual Ward in the South East.
Earlier this month, the NHS announced its world-leading virtual ward programme would be expanding to children, with overall virtual wards bed numbers expected to hit our ambition of 10,000 by the end of September.
With more than 12,000 patients every day in hospital despite being medically fit for discharge, a nationwide rollout of ‘care traffic control’ centres will provide one stop for staff to locate and co-ordinate the best and quickest discharge options for patients – either at home or into social or community care.
The centres will bring together teams from across NHS, social care, housing, and voluntary services in one place to help make live decisions and offer patients everything they need in one place.
The NHS has gone to the dogs.
Labour cannot turn it around they work for the same bosses who
control the UK Government.
Vote for an Independent is our only hope.
Someone who cares for local needs
What we need is to ditch the first-past-the-post system which only ever deliverers Punch and Judy politics.
An independent would be powerless to do anything but
What is a virtual ward?