HSJ Awards 2015: Acute, community and/or primary care services redesign

The Dudley Group Foundation Trust – ED performance

More than 700 breaches of the four-hour target to see, treat, admit or discharge emergency department patients occurred at The Dudley Group Foundation Trust in May 2014.

This was cut dramatically to just 96 breaches in the same month this year after the trust redesigned its service.

The success came after staff were told to forget about hitting the target itself – and to concentrate on delivering high quality patient care in a calm, safe way. 

According to the trust, wards no longer see poor patient flow from the emergency department as the emergency department’s problem – instead they take responsibility for patients destined for their ward even if they were located elsewhere.

Staff work at a constant pressure that creates calmness and better decision making, rather than experiencing peaks and troughs.

Discharging patients as soon as they are medically fit has become a major focus, reducing length of stay. 

Senior meetings are held four times a day to review existing and forecast bed capacity against predictions and to agree actions to keep patients moving through their clinical pathway.

Judges were wowed by the “transformational turnaround” brought about by a “whole trust effort”.