In a bid to reduce patient waiting times in the West Kent area, a new treatment centre has opened within the grounds of Maidstone Hospital – providing extra capacity for day case procedures and chemotherapy. Officially opened by the previous Health Minister, Andy Burnham (now Chief Secretary to the Treasury), the Mid Kent Treatment Centre is privately run on behalf of the NHS by the Partnership Health Group (PHG).
This has enabled around 75% of previous day care work at the hospital to be moved to the new centre. According to Steve Phoenix, chief executive of West Kent PCT, the centre is able to tackle a faster turn around of patients, while the extra capacity frees up time at the hospital for complicated and emergency surgery.
Speaking to The Clinical Services Journal, he commented: “We have longer waiting times in West Kent than I would like to see and we are a bit behind some of our neighbours. We’ve got a lot to do this year to get to 18 weeks, so we are using PHG to boost our capacity and get waiting times down. As this is a dedicated unit, emergency cases do not suddenly come in and require the surgeon to be redirected elsewhere. This means, for day care patients, you can almost guarantee there isn’t going to be a cancellation.”
Andy Burnham added there is a need to have a “pragmatic approach” to the use of private facilities: “The health service should not be a ‘like it or lump it’ service. It is appalling that patients have had to blow their personal savings to go private, in order to get quicker treatment. This is a free facility, run by the private sector, but it shouldn’t be seen as a threat to local hospitals – simply a way of supporting them. With no interruptions from emergency cases, we will see waiting lists melt away.”
The addition of the chemotherapy unit at the centre is seen as a new approach to the traditional pathway of care. It is run entirely by nurses that are all qualified chemotherapy practitioners. The centre has around 75 staff, but originally encountered a shortage of NHS nurses. However, PHG initiated a recruitment drive to meet this shortfall and there is now a 50/50 split between partnership-employed nurses and NHS nurses.
“What worried us, at first, was: ‘can you see the join?’” commented centre manager, Jane Higgins. “I thought this would be our biggest challenge but staff have integrated well.”
One of the advantages of the facility’s close integration with the hospital, is quick access in the event of an emergency. There are no overnight stays, but patients can be referred if necessary.
