No bones about it, PA and NHS reduce orthopaedic waiting list from 57,128 patients to one
For decades, long NHS waiting lists have been a bugbear for patients and governments. When large backlogs of orthopaedic patients threatened a recent government initiative to reduce maximum waiting time to six months, the Department of Health (DH) called in PA to help.
At the start of the project, 57,128 patients in England had been waiting over six months for an orthopaedic operation. Thirty-one months later that number had fallen to just one. Since December 2005, this reduction has been sustained – and has not been achieved at the expense of other access targets.
The DH had previously tried several initiatives to improve orthopaedics. PA brought crucial programme and project management methodologies to the National Orthopaedic Project (NOP), and powerful analysis and management information. PA’s help was vital in co-ordinating and facilitating the mixed teams that were critical to delivering tailored support.
PA helped create a strategy that primarily targeted the 44 most problematic orthopaedic units (out of a total of 160). Each of these 44 received an intensive two-week review, which diagnosed its difficulties and then put in place a tailored action plan. As well as follow-up support, PA provided techniques and tools for carrying out the plan, for example by identifying the optimal sequence for seeing patients on the waiting list.
The joint PA/DH team gained credibility for the programme by ensuring that each review team included respected orthopaedic surgeons and NHS executives from other organisations, and by basing recommendations on interviews with local managers and clinicians and on analysis of the trusts’ own data.
