Northumberland's hospital trust carries out more than 2,000 planned ops since Covid rules eased
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Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospitals in Northumberland and North Tyneside, postponed non-urgent operations in March due to the pandemic.
But it restarted its planned surgery as soon as it could in May – with strict measures in place to ensure the safety of patients and staff – to prevent people from having to wait any longer.
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Hide AdSince restrictions on hospitals were eased, the trust has carried out a range of elective procedures in a range of areas including orthopaedics, such as hip and knee replacements, general and gynaecological surgery.
This has resulted in Northumbria Healthcare currently being among the top performers in England in relation to referral to treatment performance, which is based on the number of patients who have their treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
James Golding, a consultant anaesthetist and deputy business unit director of surgery at the trust, said: “While postponing our elective operations was a necessary part of our well-planned response to the coronavirus pandemic, restarting them as soon as we could was a key component of our recovery and getting our hospitals functioning as near as normal as possible.
“Even though these operations are not classed as urgent, they are extremely important to patients and can really make a difference to how someone can live their life.
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Hide Ad“A lot of work has gone into making this happen and there are, of course, extra measures we have to take to make sure everyone is safe, but it’s extremely important for our trust to be able to do this in order to provide the best care and outcomes for our patients.”
Alongside postponing planned operations at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals in Northumberland could not hold outpatient clinics as normal and started to hold these virtually and over the telephone.
Since the beginning of March, more than 67,000 non-face-to-face appointments have been held, meaning patients travelled 1.1million miles less than they did in the same period two years ago.