SaTH among the best in the region for length of hospital stay

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is one of the best in the region when it comes to the length of time patients are spending in hospital.

But the Trust is refusing to rest on its laurels as it looks to fulfil its ambition to ensure patients spend the shortest time in hospital possible before being safely discharged.

The Trust, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford, benchmarks well against eight other acute Trusts in the Midlands and East of England.

It follows an independent assessment by NHS Improvement, which shows that the Trust is the third best for emergency (unplanned) and fourth best for elective (planned) care between April and June 2017.

It showed that the average length of stay in hospital following elective treatment was 3.4 days, with the average length of stay following emergency care 6.6 days.

SaTH is also performing well nationally, and is in the top 25% when it comes to the length of time that patients are spending in hospital.

Debbie Kadum, Chief Operating Officer at SaTH, said: “The figures are pleasing and are testament to the hard work of our staff. Whilst our current length of stay is good, our ambition is to be the best of the 39 large acute trusts in the country. To do that, it would mean patients staying one day less in our hospitals than they currently are.

“To enable us to do this, there are a series of improvements which are being led by our clinicians.”

These improvements include:
- Ensuring every patient has a review by a senior doctor every day

- Bringing forward the time of discharge to before 12 noon so that patients can be home and settled much earlier than they are now

- Reducing the time that patients are waiting for tests and investigations whilst in hospital

- Senior doctors setting a plan for discharge which means that other health professionals can ultimately discharge a patient

- Having more services running seven-days-a-week

Simon Wright, Chief Executive at SaTH, said: “There is a lot of great work going on in our hospitals to get people home as soon as it is safe to do so. However, we want to be among the best in the country in this area and will continue to look at ways that we can help our patients return home in the most timely manner possible when they no longer need the specialist acute care we provide.”