Annual Report 2009 -2010 - Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

work with the HSCB and the Department of Health to close the remaining gaps betweencapacity and demand in the future.Within diagnostics, the Trust delivered the 9 week waiting time by March 2010 for all but two ofthe monitored tests. Longer maximum waiting times were agreed with the HSCB for CardiacMRI tests and Myocardial Perfusion Studies (MPI). This was due to increased demand andfinancial constraints (in the case of the former) and worldwide shortage of the supply of aradioactive material essential for MPI scanning. The Trust achieved these maximum waitingtimes.With the exception of Occupational Therapy (OT), the Trust achieved the 9 week target for AHPservices. Sixty-five OT patients were waiting longer than 9 weeks in March 2010. The Trust hasnow received some additional funding for AHP services and this should enable us to achieve the9 week standard for OT, and maintain the standard for all other AHP services in 2010/11.Fracture services – “95% of patients will wait no longer than 48 hours for inpatientfracture treatment”Performance - Seasonal variation in demand for fracture services makes it difficult for the Trustto achieve this standard. Performance this year was impacted on, in particular, by the extremelycold weather spell, with an increased number of fracture patients during this period. The Trustalso does not have enough capacity to treat all patients who require specialist fracture surgerywithin 48 hours due to lack of capacity. This is an issue we are discussing this with the HSCBand we are continuing to review other ways to improve performance in this area.During March 65% of patients were treated within the 48 hour standard.Cancer services – “All urgent breast cancer referrals should be seen within 14 days, 98%of cancer patients should commence treatment within 31 days of the decision to treat and95% of patients urgently referred within with a suspect cancer should receive their firstdefinitive treatment within 62 days”Performance - The Trust performed very well against the first two areas during the year. 100%performance was consistently achieved in relation to the 14 day standard and 95% or higherwas delivered in every month against the 31 day standard.In relation to the 62 day standard, Trust performance at the end of March was 83%. It has beenrecognised that to improve overall performance investment is needed to increase capacity inUrology services. Funding for this has now been identified and this should assist the Trust inimproving our performance in 2010/11.Many patients treated in Belfast are also referred from other Trusts and sometimes the patienttransfer to us is later in the patient pathway than we would like. We are working with the otherTrusts to identify ways to speed up the transfer of patients which would mean that more patientsare treated within the 62 day standard.Accident and Emergency services – “95% of patients who attend A& E should either betreated and discharged, or admitted within 4 hours of their arrival in the Department”Performance - The Trust is disappointed that we have not been able to make significantprogress in relation to the A & E standard. In the main, overall performance during the year hasbeen between 75-80%. The prolonged cold winter and pandemic flu did have impact andpatients who needed to be admitted to hospital tended to wait longer than those who could bedischarged home. We are continuing to work hard to improve performance in this area in thecoming year.17