Lynn hospital's top ranking

12 October 2007 05:42

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the East of England's top-performing NHS hospital for day surgery procedures, say new figures out last night.

Nationally the QEH is now ranked fifth in the country out of nearly 150 hospitals. The NHS Institute's Better Care, Better Value study ranks the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in 67th place.

Lead clinician for the Arthur Levin Day Surgery Centre, Dr Beverley Watson, said, 'This reflects a combination of surgical, anaesthetic, nursing and administration enthusiasm for day surgery. We have a fantastic team here with a real 'can do' approach to improving patient care.”

The report looked at how hospitals are finding ways of improving their performance and giving patients better value for money.

This included a study of 'clinical productivity', based on a list of 25 day-case procedures carried out at hospitals.

These include some of the more routine operations such as cataract removal, hernia repairs, treatment of varicose veins, treatment for breast lumps, haemorrhoids, pregnancy terminations and removal of tonsils.

Latest figures, for the period April - June 2007 show that 85.4pc of operations at the QEH are now carried out as day cases, way above the Government target of 75pc.

The Audit Commission estimated that if all NHS Trusts carried out at least 75pc of surgery as day cases this would free, nationally, an estimated 390,000 'bed days', which would save the NHS £78 million for investment in other service improvements.

At the QEH day case performance has been continually improving and the latest figures show an improvement in performance of 4.1pc over the previous quarter.

In financial terms this improvement translates as a potential cash saving of around £20,000 in a full year.

Email A Friend