Efforts to get Northumberland hospitals back to normal after coronavirus crisis

Northumberland’s hospitals are working hard to get back up to speed, amid claims of ‘worrying talk’ elsewhere in the North East about ignoring cancer targets.
The Northumbria Hospital at Cramlington.The Northumbria Hospital at Cramlington.
The Northumbria Hospital at Cramlington.

An update on the Covid-19 recovery framework at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospitals in Northumberland and North Tyneside, was presented to its board meeting on Thursday, July 23.

Dr Jeremy Rushmer, executive medical director, said: “I think it’s excellent where we have got to, but at the moment it does seem over the top the barriers that are being put in place.

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“I do hope we are going to be able to risk-assess and get more done. We would be keen to see some of the national guidance change.”

This echoed what he said at a recent meeting of Northumberland County Council’s health and wellbeing committee, where he warned that ‘it has become time to talk about the fact that the population risk is not just coronavirus’ with issues such as isolation and economic turmoil likely to have health and wellbeing impacts.

Birju Bartoli, executive director of performance and improvement, said that the ‘regional figures on the backlog are really quite worrying’.

She claimed that there had been talk from some about not needing to hit cancer targets, as long as the figures are met across the ICS (the integrated care system, which covers the whole of the North East and North Cumbria).

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“I pushed back quite strongly on that, saying my board would not accept that,” she said, adding that it was ‘worrying to have talk like that’.

In relation to cancer patients waiting less than 62 days from GP referral to treatment, Northumbria Healthcare’s performance for June was 80.1% and it is currently getting back up towards the 85% target, the meeting heard.

June’s provisional performance for two-week waits for suspected cancer was 98.5%, against a standard of 93%.

The trust has been carrying out ongoing monitoring of all of its activity levels in comparison to the same period last year, with the latest figures showing that outpatient activity is at 71% of what it was last year, day cases at 90%, elective surgery at 73% and trauma and orthopaedics at 75%.

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Currently, 78% of patients are waiting less than six weeks for diagnostic tests, against a target of 99%, but this is a significant improvement from the 42.5% – an all-time low – recorded when services first opened up again.

Ms Bartoli reported that patients are generally more confident now about coming to hospital – at a time when there are just two Covid-positive patients across the trust’s sites.

Earlier in the meeting, the trust’s chief executive, Sir James Mackey, said that they are now ‘worried about the people we haven’t seen’.

“For the first time, we have adjusted the dial from green to amber,” he said, referring to the self-assessment on the CEO dashboard presented at every board meeting.

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“Our staff have done a fantastic job, but if you look at some of the numbers, we are in a tricky place. We are not out of the woods yet.

“We have done well in managing the episode, our staff and partners did us proud, but we have a long way to go before we feel we are on top of this, particularly going into winter.”

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