The Trust’s doctors and nurses have worked with our patients, stakeholders and partner health care organisations to draw up a Clinical Strategy that describes the shape and scope of our organisation and the key changes in services we intend to deliver over the coming years.
The Clinical Strategy has four central themes:
Maintaining two acute hospital sites within coastal West Sussex with A&E services, acute medicine, maternity and neonatal services
The Fit for the Future consultation exercise West Sussex PCT ran in 2008 and 2009 produced an agreement that the needs of the area’s population, the poor quality of its transport links and wider public opinion required that these key services be maintained at both Worthing and St Richard’s Hospitals. Our Clinical Strategy restates our commitment to this.
Working in partnership to better manage emergency hospital admissions
The Trust is working with its local health care partners to address a recent trend in rising emergency admission numbers that is expected to continue as our elderly population grows.
Initiatives such as the 'One Call, One Team' project are examples of this kind of partnership working in practice, but we are also looking to reduce emergency admissions through improvements to our own services including cardiology, stroke, dementia, long-term conditions, orthogeriatrics and paediatrics.
The redesign and rationalisation of planned care across the Trust
The Trust believes there are a number of improvements that can be made to the quality and efficiency of the services we provide through changes to the way we deliver planned (elective) care.
In particular, we are looking at how we manage referrals from GPs, at improvements to surgical techniques and pathways to enable patients to return home sooner after operations, and at the way we provide surgery in specialties such as joint replacement, bowel cancer, the maxillo-facial unit, ENT (ear, nose and throat) and gynaecology.
Working with local and specialist networks to deliver integrated care
Although the Trust is always looking to innovate and develop best practice, it does not plan to become a specialist hospital, in the manner of those at Brighton, Portsmouth and Southampton to which we currently refer patients requiring specialist care.
Our long-term aim is to focus our network links on Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, and we are also working to create more integrated county-wide networks in areas such as cancer care, pathology and vascular services.
