Eliminating the waitlist in Barking, Havering and Redbridge
Pre-pandemic, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Trust (BHRUT) had the forsight to seek to reduce waiting times to improve patient care.
Medefer established a partnership with the CCG in March 2017, tasked with building a Gastroenterology Virtual hospital for BHRUT outpatient services.
To this day, Medefer supports gastroenterology across BHRUT by managing outpatient appointments – support that proved critically important during COVID-19.
The goals
- Improve patient outcomes, reduce waiting times, and provide quality care for patients closer to home
- Alleviate issues BHRUT faced with recruiting gastroenterology staff
- Educate GPs to manage gastroenterology conditions in primary care
- Reduce rates of cancer through early detection
Building a virtual hospital for BHRUT:
Following implementation of our model, we have delivered:
- 99% of referrals were triaged within 48 hours.
- Overall, 71% of patients did not need a physical outpatient appointment.
- 6166 patients referred to Medefer (Mar 2017– Jun 2019).
- Reduced the initial consultant triage time from weeks or months to an average of 10 hours
- Within this time, 3% of referrals were upgraded to urgent and 2% were upgraded to the cancer pathway.
- After consultant triage:
- 8% were discharged to GP with simple advice
- 13% were deemed too complex and reviewed in outpatient clinics
- 79% entered the virtual hospital pathway
- Follow-up review of tests in the virtual hospital led to 82% being discharged back to the GP, and the rest were pre-optimised for a first physical outpatient appointment.
Our virtual hospital model has created exceptional impact:
- There is currently no waiting list for BHRUT clinics (despite shutting down for six months)
- It was the only gastro department during COVID-19 that had no referral to treatment (RTT) issues
- No waiting list for endoscopy
- No waiting list for cancer services