Urgent and Emergency Care Teams at Walsall Manor Hospital, who have worked to deliver some of the shortest ambulance handover times in the country, have seen their efforts shortlisted in a national award programme.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust has been shortlisted in the Performance Recovery Award category of the Health Service Journal (HSJ) awards.

This category recognises “teams and organisations innovating to deliver tangible improvements for staff, patients, and populations, as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Since coming out of special measures in 2019, the Trust has been working to tackle a number of challenges including workforce vacancies, a 21 per cent increase in patients going to the Emergency Department (ED) with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, and out-dated facilities.

Now, it is consistently in the top 25 per cent in the country for the most high-profile measure of A&E performance in England – the 4-hour Emergency Access Standard. This standard states at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted to hospital, transferred to another provider, or discharged within four hours. The Trust has been within this ranking since February 2021.

And it has seen the best timeliness of ambulance handovers within the West Midlands for 28 of the past 40 months, with more than 90 per cent of crews consistently being able to offload patients within 30 minutes. More importantly, the Trust is seeing improvements in a range of clinical outcomes for its patients.

William Roberts, Deputy Chief Operating Officer at Walsall Healthcare, said: “To be shortlisted for this award is a testament to the passion and commitment of our hard-working clinical teams who have led these improvements. It is entirely due to their professionalism, compassion and determination to work to mitigate against the avoidable harm that can happen when the ED is over-occupied or we are unable to offload an ambulance in a timely way.

We are proud to be able to work in our new Urgent and Emergency Care Centre, which opened last year and provides our patients with a significantly improved environment, but these improvements were being driven before this.”

William added there is also “an embedded culture of professionalism and high standards” recognised in a visit from the national Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Urgent and Emergency Care Team in the summer.

“From a workforce perspective, our Emergency Department is beginning to establish itself as a location of choice for Doctors in training and we have developed been successful in implementing a programme of enhanced and advanced practice that goes from Band 6 Nurses through to senior Advanced Care Practitioners,” he said.

“We are definitely going in the right direction with further investment including our ongoing £5.5m Emergency Operating Theatres’ refurbishment and are grateful to have the opportunity to share our improvements on a national stage. Thank you to all of our teams who have got us this far and I hope we win this prestigious award!”

Winners will be announced at a ceremony on 21 November.