The Sixth Patient Report of the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit was published earlier this month and it highlighted Gloucestershire Royal Hospital as one of the best performing trusts in the England and Wales. This builds on the success of Southmead Hospital and Weston Hospital who were both highlighted last year.
Emergency laparotomy is a major surgical procedure, with 30,000 to 50,000 performed every year in the UK. However, around 10% of patients are reported to die within 30 days of surgery and patients stay in hospital for an average of 15 days after surgery, at significant cost to the NHS.
These figures were significantly higher a few years ago and so the Health Foundation funded the Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative (ELC) in 2015 to use a quality improvement (QI) approach to tackle this. The Collaborative brought together 28 hospitals and 24 NHS trusts across three Academic Health Science Network regions: Kent Surrey Sussex; Wessex; and the West of England.
Anne Pullyblank, West of England AHSN Medical Director commented:
“The Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative has been a fantastic example of Quality Improvement methodology being used across a number of institutions to bring about measurable change that has saved lives and improved outcomes. True collaborative spirit has been evident at our learning events and we have benefited from our involvement
It is great to see hospitals in the West of England being recognised nationally for their work. In the West of England AHSN our surgical teams are now using QI methodology in the PreciSSIon project, to reduce the incidence of surgical site infection after elective colorectal surgery.”
Posted on December 7, 2020
