Path to Excellence update

The Path to Excellence is five-year healthcare transformation programme across South Tyneside and Sunderland which has been set up to secure the future of local NHS services and to identify new and innovative ways of delivering high quality, joined-up, sustainable care that will benefit the population both now and in the future.

The NHS organisations involved in the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Partnership are:

South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust

North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB)

Phase Two of Path to Excellence programme

Phase Two of Path to Excellence will no longer progress as it currently stands. 

It’s now over two years ago since they shared their working ideas for T&O and General Surgery.  Since then, a number of things have influenced and superseded their plans.  No one could have foreseen a global pandemic and the lasting changes that this would bring. Most notable is the even greater increase in demand on all parts of NHS services.

Despite the challenges of the past few years, they have still made great progress.  There are many improvements to be proud of.  They have done this as part of their ‘business as usual’. This includes: 

• Making sure they have more theatre space for when they need to operate in an emergency.  This also reduces the need to cancel as many planned operations at times of peak demand. 
• Making sure they get more people home sooner after they have had their surgery.  In T&O they have expanded their outreach service to support with this.  The service now looks after patients in Sunderland as well as South Tyneside.
• Being more productive with their theatre time in T&O so that they can do more planned operations.  This is helping to get waiting lists down.
• Creating a new unit where they can do minor hand surgery. This means they can keep their main operating theatres free for other surgery.

This great progress is down to the efforts of their surgical teams.  It means they now meet many more clinical standards which is great news for patients.  Over the past few years there has been major investment into the South Tyneside District Hospital site with new facilities including the Integrated Diagnostic Centre, a new Intensive Care Unit, a new Endoscopy Unit, Women’s Health Unit and Outpatient Pharmacy.

There is still more they can do to improve quality further.  The Trust will now continue to improve its local health and care services in line with the ambitions outlined in the region’s Integrated Care Strategy.  This will include working with partners, with patients and with the public to plan together for the future.