Classification: Official
Publication reference: PRN00673

To:

• NHS acute trusts:
  • chairs
  • chief executives
  • medical directors
  • chief operating officers

cc.

• NHS England regional directors

Dear Colleagues,

Protecting and expanding elective capacity

In May, we wrote to you outlining the priorities for elective and cancer recovery for the year ahead. Last week, as part of the winter letter, we also asked you to maintain as far as possible ring-fenced elective and cancer capacity through winter.

We would like to thank you for your continued hard work in these areas, in the face of significant wider operational challenges, including ongoing industrial action. Thanks to the efforts put in by staff across the NHS, we have now virtually eliminated pathways waiting over 78 weeks, down by 94% since the peak of 124,000 in September 2021 (and now representing c0.1% of the total list), and significantly decreased the number of patients with urgent suspected cancer waiting longer than 62 days from a high of 34,000 to around 21,000 today.

However, one area where we know there remains more to do is outpatients. We have listened to your feedback on the support you need for this transformation and have set out the next steps below.

National support for outpatient transformation

To support outpatient transformation, we have met with royal colleges, specialist societies and patient representatives to agree a way forward, working in partnership, to champion and enable outpatient recovery and transformation. At the ‘call to arms’, colleges agreed to:

• review their guidance on outpatient follow-ups​
• support new approaches to increasing wider outpatient productivity, including reducing variation in clinical templates, patient discharge, and following clinically-informed access policies.​

Together with this clinical leadership, we need to build on the expectation of freeing up capacity and increasing productivity. This can be achieved through reducing follow up appointments with no procedure, fully validating RTT waiting lists, reducing variation in clinical templates, moving to patient-initiated follow-up where appropriate, following clinically-informed access policies and implementing new ways of working, such as group outpatient follow ups, reviewing clinical pathways and workforce models.

We are continuing to provide support to trusts in this area, through the following:

• Regional support
• NHS England’s GIRFT outpatient guidance
• Action on Outpatients series
• The Model Health System
• Support to specific trusts via NHS England’s GIRFT Further Faster programme, NHSE Tiering programme and Elective Care Improvement Support Team (IST) – learning from the Further Faster programme will be shared in the Autumn
• Access to additional capacity through the NHS Emeritus Consultant programme
• Luna weekly data quality report, which can be accessed by contacting lunadq@mbihealthcaretechnologies.com and Foundry data dashboards
• RTT rules suite
• Elective Care IST Recovery Hub – FutureNHS Collaboration Platform
• Guidance on shared decision making.

Next steps on outpatient transformation

With the majority (c80%) of patient waits ending with an outpatient appointments, we need to increase the pace in transforming outpatient services to release capacity for patients awaiting their first contact and diagnosis. This will be particularly important ahead of and during winter, when pressure on inpatient beds can be at its highest. Nationally, achieving a 25% reduction in follow up attendances without procedures would provide the equivalent to approximately 1m outpatient appointments per month.

This letter therefore sets out further detail on three key actions that we are asking you to take:

• Revisit your plan on outpatient follow up reduction, to identify more opportunity for transformation.
• Set an ambition that no patient in the 65-week ‘cohort’ (patients who, if not treated by 31 March 2024, will have breached 65 weeks) will be waiting for a first outpatient appointment after 31 October 2023.
• Maintain an accurate and validated waiting list by ensuring that at least 90% of patients who have been waiting over 12 weeks are contacted and validated (in line with December 2022 validation guidance) by 31 October 2023, and ensuring that RTT rules are applied in line with the RTT national rules suite and local access policies are appropriately applied.

We are now asking trusts to provide assurance against a set of activities that will drive outpatient recovery at pace. This process will require a review of current annual plans, detailing the progress that can be made on outpatients transformation. As part of the above priorities, we are asking each provider to ensure that this work is discussed and challenged appropriately at board, undertake a board self-certification process and have it signed off by trust chairs and chief executives by 30 September 2023.

The details of this self-certification can be found at Appendix A. Please share this letter with your board, key clinical and operational teams, and relevant committees.

If you are unable to complete the self-certification process then please discuss next steps with your regional team.

Thank you again for colleagues’ efforts in this area, which are making a real difference to the timeliness of care we deliver to patients. We look forward to receiving your returns and, as always, if you need to discuss this in more detail, or support in conducting this exercise, please contact england.electiverecoverypmo@nhs.net.

Yours sincerely,

Sir James Mackey, National Director of Elective Recovery, NHS England

Professor Tim Briggs CBE, National Director of Clinical Improvement, Chair, Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme, NHS England

Appendix A: self-certification

About this self-certification

To deliver elective and cancer recovery ambitions, high-quality waiting list management and ambitious outpatient transformation are vital. We are now asking trusts to complete this return to provide assurance on these recovery plans.

Nationally and regionally, we will use this to identify providers requiring more support, as well as areas of good practice that can be scaled up to accelerate recovery. Please return this to NHS England by 30 September 2023, via NHS England regional teams.

Guidance for completing the self-certification

The return asks for assurance that the board has reviewed and discussed specific outpatient operational priorities and has signed off the completed checklist. Please return this to your NHS England regional team.

Trust return: [insert trust name here]

The chair and CEO are asked to confirm that the board:

Sign off