Alder Hey one of eight NHS hospital trusts awarded £2m funding for reducing waiting times for planned care.
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is one of just eight trusts to be awarded funding through a new NHSE incentive scheme, recognising performance in reducing waiting times and improving access to planned care.
The NHS Elective Capital Incentive Scheme was set up this year to reward organisations that significantly improve waiting times for planned care over a sustained period, including reducing the size of their waiting list overall.
Alder Hey will receive £2m for meeting the targets of the scheme between April and September this year. The Trust has made a significant improvement of 7.87% to its referral-to-treatment (RTT) performance while also ensuring continued progress in reducing waiting lists, including long waits.
This has been achieved through a focused programme of improvement including:
- Accelerating plans to digitise patient pathways, making them more accessible for children, young people and their families and allowing appointments to be made more efficiently.
- Reviewing how many appointments were lost through non-attendance in specialties with the longest waits and increasing the number of children and young people booked into clinics.
- Introducing a new process in theatres to identify any long-waiting patients and prioritise them if any operational issues arise.
- Delivering additional outpatient clinics and theatre sessions in specialties with the longest waits.
- Strong engagement with clinical leaders and operational teams ensuring a clear, stepped-up approach with defined targets.
We are delighted and incredibly proud to receive this funding which is real recognition of the efforts and dedication of our teams who have worked extremely hard to drive down waiting times and see our children and young people as quickly as possible.
John Grinnell, Alder Hey Chief Executive
“We have made significant progress in reducing our waiting lists, and this investment will allow us to accelerate our efforts so that every child and young person receives the care they need without unnecessary delay. We must continue finding ways to empower children, young people, families and staff through advancements in digital technology, data and AI, which will help release clinician’s time and ultimately improve care. Our children and young people are at the heart of everything we do, and we remain committed to providing them with the highest quality of care both now and in the future.”
The £2m funding will be used to support further recovery of planned care including new equipment to enable procedures to safely take place in the Trust’s surgical day case unit or outpatient clinic instead of main theatres; increasing physical outpatient room capacity to see more children and young people in clinic; and enhancing efficiency by increasing equipment across several specialities.
NHS England’s Capital Incentive Scheme supports the Government’s aim to return to the 92% 18-week standard by March 2029, as set out in the plan for reforming elective care and the 10 Year Health Plan for England.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “NHS staff and leaders at Alder Hey are leading the way to a brighter future for the NHS, so I want to recognise and reward their excellent work.
“Our brilliant frontline staff are innovating and finding new ways to run their surgeries and get patients seen faster. This government is backing them with extra investment and modernisation, and waiting lists are falling for the first time in 15 years as a result.
“This is what gives me hope that we can turn the NHS around, get people off waiting lists and back to their lives. There’s a long way to go, but the NHS is on the road to recovery.”
Stella Vig, NHS England’s Clinical Director for Elective Care, said: “We set out the challenge earlier this year to Trusts to drastically bring down their waiting lists.
“This approach has seen eight of them make particularly impressive progress helping thousands of patients get the care they need more quickly.
“This £2m capital funding will support efforts to speed up care even further and set a strong example for other organisations to learn from.”
The announcement of the funding award comes alongside the publication of the latest NHS league tables – introduced by the Government to drive up standards and tackle variations in care – with every trust in England ranked against clear standards covering all aspects of healthcare including urgent and emergency care, elective operations and mental health services. Alder Hey remains amongst the highest performing trusts in the country in Segment 1.