News

A team from Kettering General Hospital has been shortlisted for a prestigious national award for reducing unnecessarily long stays in hospital for patients.

The hospital’s Long Stay Wednesday Team has made it through into the finals of the HSJ Awards 2019 in the Acute or Specialist Service Redesign Initiative category.

Hundreds of NHS and social care organisations enter the awards each year and competition is fierce in all of the award categories.

In August 2018 KGH launched an initiative called Long Stay Wednesday where a team of key senior staff meet with ward teams and partner organisations each week (on a Wednesday) to concentrate on helping long-stay patients to leave hospital.

The initiative has looked at ‘super stranded patients’ – individuals who have been in hospital for more than three weeks for a variety of often complex reasons around their care, rehabilitation and appropriate support outside of hospital.

Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Fiona Lennon, who leads the team, said: “Reducing the number of Super Stranded patients was really important to us because we know that long stays in hospital can lead to problems.

“In hospital people tend to become less active, lose muscle-mass, and can become frailer and more at risk of falling.

“They can also lose the confidence in their ability to manage and support themselves as independently as possible.

“We wanted to do everything we can to prevent this by working closely with our health and social care partners to enable our patients to be appropriately discharged from hospital once they are medically fit to leave.

“In turn this helps us to improve flow and bed availability in the hospital so that our emergency patients can quickly access a hospital bed if needed.”

The Long Stay Wednesday Team is made up of senior members of KGH staff who are able to make quick decisions and liaise closely with our community partners.

The team consists of the hospital’s Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Deputy Director of Nursing, Head of Discharge, Head of Therapies, Head of Operations, Discharge Team Leader, Principal Care Manager (Northamptonshire Adult Social Care), CHS (Care Home Selection) representatives, CHchsProject Manager and Administrator.

KGH’s Chief Operating Officer, Jo Fawcus, said: “We are incredibly proud that the Long Stay Wednesday Team has been shortlisted for the finals of this prestigious national award.

“A lot of hard work and dedication has been involved with the team meeting every week to progress patients on from their hospital stay.

“Often ‘Super Stranded’ patient cases are complex with significant work needed to ensure safe discharge to an appropriate setting outside of hospital.

“By focussing our efforts on unblocking any delays right away, and having a clear plan for each patient, we have made considerable progress in reducing the number of patients staying longer than they need to.”

In July 2018 KGH had an average of 195 super stranded patients in hospital on any one day. A year on this has been reduced to about 100 patients per day.

On June 26 the hospital hosted a regional event to cascade its results and methods around Long Stay Wednesday to about eight other NHS hospitals.

HSJ editor Alistair Mclellan, said: “We would like to congratulate Kettering General Hospital’s Long Stay Wednesday Team on being nominated in the category of Acute or Specialist Service Redesign Initiative ahead of this year’s 2019 HSJ awards.

“We are looking forward to welcoming them to the ceremony in November, to join us in recognising the very best achievements and innovations in the healthcare sector.

“The entrants this year have been of incredible calibre, and each of the finalists in this category have been chosen based on their outstanding commitment to excellence in healthcare.”

The full list of nominees for the 2019 HSJ awards (partnered by GRI) can be found on https://awards.hsj.co.uk/2019-shortlist.

 Winners will be selected ahead of the 2019 HSJ awards ceremony, which is due to be held at the Battersea Evolution Centre, London on November 6th.

The judging panel is made up of a diverse range of highly influential and respected figures within the healthcare community.