At today’s meeting of the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde board Robert Calderwood, Chief Executive, updated members on an improved A&E performance at the new South Glasgow University Hospital.
Board members heard that since Monday 15th June the hospital has achieved an average of 89.6 per cent performance against the national A&E target.
Whilst national A&E performance data is published weekly these new management figures are an update on the performance which was published today for the week ending 14th June.
Mr Calderwood praised staff for their enormous efforts in response to the challenges that bedding-in after such an enormous period of changed has brought and also took the time to thank patients for their patience during this time.
The board also noted that while challenges have been experienced at the ‘front door’, elsewhere the hospital is already making a significant contribution to NHSGGC’s strong performance in meeting key waiting times guarantees for outpatients and planned operations.
Many thousands of planned patients have already been seen and treated at the hospital within national waiting time guarantees.
Other key highlights include:
- all patients are being seen within the national waiting time target of four weeks for all diagnostic tests,
- the renal service carried out 10 kidney transplants in the first three weeks of transfer to the new hospital – enabled thanks to an increase in capacity,
- two patients received bone marrow transplants within the first week of the service transferring to the new hospital. The move to the hospitals has enabled this service to increase the number of bone marrow transplant beds from 19 to 24.
Board members were also advised that following the migration of services from Yorkhill to the new Royal Hospital for Sick Children the same high performance against the national A&E target for paediatrics has continued with current performance sitting at 99 per cent post-migration.
Mr Calderwood said: “There is no doubt that change on this scale – the biggest hospital migration ever undertaken in the UK – has been a significant challenge to our unscheduled care performance. However our teams have been responding quickly and effectively to these challenges and the tireless efforts of managers and clinicians are now bearing fruit in the form of an improving A&E performance. I am very grateful to all staff involved for their dedicated work and commitment.
“I also wish to record my thanks to colleagues from the Scottish Government’s Unscheduled Care Team for their assistance in working with our own teams to jointly identify further measures to achieve the improvements in patient flow required.
“There is still some way to go to achieving a sustained performance and improvement still required to achieve the national target consistently but I am confident that we are moving in the right direction and I am proud of the hard work of all staff who are striving to achieve the very real benefits that this hospital was designed to deliver for patients.”