Could shared appointments end growing wait lists

 

A London Business School innovation expert has called for greater experimentation in healthcare delivery after a report published today by the Care Quality Commission, raised serious concerns about healthcare delivery at one of the UK’s major NHS hospitals.

The report released earlier today praised the hard work, passion and care of staff at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, but raised serious concerns about: staff shortages, high use of bank staff, patients waiting for more than 18 weeks for elective care and up to 51 weeks for outpatient eye care.

But Addenbroke’s is not alone. The Guardian reports today that it is the 26th NHS trust in England to be placed into the NHS’s improvement regime. 

Kamalini Ramdas, Deloitte Chair of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, London Business School, says: “Across the country talented doctors and management teams are doing their best to deliver world class healthcare to more people than ever before, increasingly against the backdrop of incredibly tough financial challenges.”

With a healthcare system bursting at the seams, Professor Ramdas, says the time for radical innovation is now. She is advocating experiments in shared appointments, which she believes have the potential to deliver tangible benefits for patients while making critical cost savings. 

“Radical innovation looks like a leap of faith if you don’t know how to experiment quickly and cheaply”, Ramdas explains. 

“Our ability to deliver the standard of healthcare which is free at the point of delivery and which has made the UK the envy of the world will stand or fall by our ability to innovate radically.
“Shared appointments have tremendous potential to improve patient outcomes while simultaneously reducing waiting times and cutting costs. The time to start is now, first with a series of small, controlled, experiments.”

 

Professor Ramdas introduced the concept of shared appointments to the Aravind Eye Care System, the world’s largest eye care provider and now a leader in experimenting with the use of shared appointments. 

Professor Ramdas will speak alongside Mr Thulasiraj Ravilla, Aravind’s Executive Director and Dr Rengaraj Venkatesh, Chief Medical Officer of its Pondicherry Hospital, at the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Driving Innovation in Healthcare Delivery event on 20 October. They will be joined by the Chairman of NHS England, Sir Malcolm Grant, and other leaders in healthcare delivery.