Shropshire hospitals outline how Future Fit changes will work
This is how Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust believes the changes under Future Fit – which they call the Hospitals Transformation Programme (HTP) – will work, and benefit patients:
Planned Care Services
A dedicated site will be created for planned care at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford. The trust says it will bring direct benefits for patients, including fewer cancellations and delays for operations, shorter waiting times for cancer care and a better patient experience.
Streamlined Emergency Services
The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital site will specialise in emergency care. The trust says this will benefit patients through immediate access to medical and surgical specialist teams based at the same location.
NHS bosses say creating one dedicated Emergency Department for Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin will help to ensure that patients are seen more quickly by the most appropriate specialist teams. They say patients will experience a more rapid diagnosis and shorter hospital stays and that there will be an improved patient flow, with shorter patient waiting times, and faster ambulance handover times
24/7 Urgent Care Services
The trust says both the Telford and Shrewsbury sites will provide 24-hour urgent care services, providing improved access for the assessment and treatment of a wide range of illness and injuries.
The hospitals’ management team says Telford will benefit from a new enhanced urgent care service, an A&E Local model, staffed by a multi-disciplinary team of health, care and community professionals. They insist this is a significant enhancement of urgent care services in Telford and means around two thirds of patients currently treated at Telford’s A&E department will continue to receive the care they need at their most local hospital.
Women and Children’s Services
Women and Children’s inpatient services will be based in Shrewsbury, ensuring higher risk maternity cases and children admitted under the care of specialist paediatricians have immediate access to on-site medical and surgical specialists and other experts at the emergency site.
Both hospital sites will provide a range of assessment and maternity outpatient and scanning services, along with midwife-led birthing units for low-risk births. The trust says that this means that the majority of expectant mothers will continue to receive their antenatal and postnatal care at the site closest to home.
Services staying local
In addition to urgent care services, the trust says both sites will provide a wide range of common services including testing (diagnostics such as X-rays), outpatients appointments and day case chemotherapy.
The trust says the Joint Investment Committee’s decision to approve the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) signals a move to the next stage of creating the model of care which was recommended for implementation by the NHS Independent Reconfiguration Panel and supported by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in 2019, following the major Future Fit public consultation.
Work has begun on preparing an Outline Business Case, a more detailed appraisal of each of the options. The third and final stage of the process will be a Full Business Case.
