NHS South Central
Atos Consulting, 2008
Transforming patient care to end waiting and change lives
Summary
A ground-breaking programme with the NHS has ended excessive waiting and helped thousands of patients get better care.
Making a sustainable difference in the hectic and complex environment of the NHS is notoriously difficult.
Yet a team from Atos Consulting has helped NHS South Central meet a Government target early to reduce patient waiting times while making sustainable improvements to quality of care.
Joint teams of clinicians and consultants worked closely together to understand the patients’ journey from diagnosis to treatment. They focused at a detailed level on patients’ needs to improve working practices by applying the principles of lean thinking taken from industry.
This was the first time lean thinking has been applied across an entire Strategic Health Authority and across so many organisational boundaries. As a result waiting times have reduced by an average of 14 weeks, and 25 weeks in some cases.
All this was achieved not by increasing funding, but by making sustainable improvements to release capacity, sometimes by 25%.
Key to success was the powerful combination of the passion and experience of NHS staff with the expertise and momentum of the consultants to make and sustain real change.
At the start, many in the NHS doubted whether it would succeed and had other competing priorities. Atos Consulting successfully gained credibility with frontline staff and worked closely with them to embed innovative new practices.
The NHS believes that the programme has brought an end to excessive waiting times, transforming the way healthcare is delivered and improving the lives of thousands of patients.
Problem/opportunity faced by client
NHS South Central is one of ten Strategic Health Authorities in England serving around four million people across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
NHS South Central is one of ten Strategic Health Authorities in England serving around four million people across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
It comprises nine primary care trusts, nine acute trusts, three mental health trusts, one learning disability trust, one specialist trust and one ambulance trust.
In June 2004 the Government published its NHS Improvement Plan requiring that ‘by 2008 no-one will wait longer than 18 weeks from GP referral to hospital treatment’.
As an early adopter of the NHS Improvement Plan, and without additional funding to make it happen, NHS South Central realised that what was needed was a transformation of the way it delivered patient services.
Please log in to view the full case study. If you haven't registered yet, you'll need to do so and must be a client (rather than a consultant) to view this content. Registration is free and only takes a minute.
