MOBILE HEALTHCARE FACILITIES
overcome a number of capacity challenges and safeguard itself against influxes in demand.
The exterior of a Visiting Hospital, which combines a mobile theatre and a mobile ward unit, allowing the facility to effectively act as a standalone day surgery.
In June 2014 the Trust had a mobile Visiting Hospital from Vanguard Healthcare Solutions installed at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, providing capacity to both treat patients and provide ample room for their recovery. As part of its focus on improving access to services, SaTH utilised mobile healthcare facilities to reduce the 18-week waiting list for patients requiring upper limb and orthopaedics and dental surgery procedures. Vanguard Healthcare Solutions’ ‘Visiting Hospital’ comprises an intuitive combination of a mobile theatre and a mobile ward unit, allowing the facility to effectively act as a standalone day surgery. The theatre unit, which houses dedicated anaesthetic, operating, and recovery rooms, provides the highest standards of sterile clinical environment. The facility features a laminar flow system in the operating theatre, which forces over 600 complete changes of air per hour under its hood. This drastically minimises the risk of airborne infection – making the unit highly suited to the invasive orthopaedic procedures the Trust wanted to carry out.
A ‘skeleton’ view of a Mobile Visiting Hospital.
Meeting the greatest demand Temporarily having the additional surgical capacity on site allowed the Trust to more intuitively organise its waiting lists, by improving access to treatment in the specialities for which demand was greatest. In Trauma and Orthopaedics, the percentage of patients treated within 18 weeks of referral increased by nearly a third between June 2014, when the unit was installed, and December the same year, when the final procedures took place. In the 23 weeks the unit was on site, 742 additional treatments took place at The Princess Royal Hospital, carried out by the Trust’s own surgeons and assisted by Vanguard Healthcare’s nursing staff. Debbie Kadum, the Trust’s chief operating officer, said: “Ensuring that our patients have full access to the treatment we require has always been a priority for the Trust. At a time when we wanted to improve this access, Vanguard Healthcare provided the perfect solution. The Visiting Hospital allowed us to meet the challenge head on, and organise our waiting lists around the additional capacity. ”
Seasonal planning
A Vanguard mobile operating theatre; the company regularly provides clinical staff to assist NHS Trust and other healthcare providers’ own such personnel.
36 Health Estate Journal March 2017
After the success of the Visiting Hospital at SaTH, the Trust once again turned to mobile healthcare facilities in late 2015. The Trust anticipated that increased winter demand would cause backlogs to escalate; while this would normally see it dedicate extra ward space to medicine over the winter months when demand peaks, the space simply wasn’t available.
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