Wes Streeting today backed the rollout of surgical hubs to help clear NHS waiting lists
Wes Streeting MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (DHSC)
Currently 7.6 million people are waiting in the NHS for an operation or procedure. The surgical hubs may improve productivity by 20%.
The Health Secretary said the hubs, run by 31 NHS trusts serving around one quarter of the population, were a ‘shining example’ of innovation that should be rolled out more widely.
Mr Streeting said,
Surgical hubs are a shining example of how we can use groundbreaking, innovative practices already happening in the NHS to speed up treatments and bring down the unacceptable waiting lists we have inherited.
We are urgently seeking to identify and replicate more productive ways of working across the health service, to get better value for taxpayers’ money and give all patients the care they deserve”
The stand-alone hubs are separate to hospital A&E departments, with beds ring-fenced so operations are less likely to be cancelled because a bed is needed for an emergency case.
They focus on simple procedures which can be done in high volumes, such as cataract operations; hip and knee replacements; gynaecology; ear, nose and throat procedures; and hernia removal.
New research by The Health Foundation found that trusts which tested the hubs undertook 22 per cent more operations in their first year of operation than would previously have been expected.
Across England, the 31 trusts were able to carry out 29,000 more procedures than expected. The hubs were also associated with shorter stays in hospital, with production-line methods speeding up the throughput of cases.
