Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust Case Study

Delivering a world class endoscopy service in the midst of COVID-19

Xyla is honoured to support Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust’s national centre of excellence in endoscopy, enabling the delivery of world-class service for local patients.  Our consultant-led teams have completed over 2,900 procedures since we started in September 2020 with a patient satisfaction rate of 99 %. We are proud of what patients say about our service, 98% had confidence in our clinical teams, and all of them agreed they were treated with dignity and respect; a patient said of our service:

“I value you all for your patience, outstanding care and amazing kindness. My concerns were appeased as soon as the nursing staff talked me through what was going to happen and once the sedative was given. I didn’t know a thing until the lovely nurse Monika spoke to me. Thank you all very much.”

The Challenge

When Xyla started working with Portsmouth Hospital University NHS Trust’s endoscopy team, there were challenges to overcome as trust needed to be rebuilt following a previous, unsuccessful insourcing arrangement with another supplier. Our team responded rapidly, stepping in within two weeks of being asked and delivering a seamless transition with no disruption to services or patients. We started small by providing services across two endoscopy procedure rooms at the weekend, building this up to three rooms after a month, and including a midweek service for one endoscopy procedure room. Each room delivers 26 endoscopy JAG points both at the weekends and midweek.

Throughout this period, we have built trust and confidence with the Portsmouth Hospital team through our commitment to continuous improvement and our focus on patient experience. We have worked closely with the endoscopy team to deliver the service in line with existing care pathways and provide additional, much-needed capacity and flexibility. Patient safety is at the heart of all the work we do. Our robust and comprehensive clinical governance gives us confidence in the services we deliver, which in turn helps build confidence and trust across the delivery teams. To date, we have met and exceeded all JAG quality and safety outcome metrics.

Our Innovative Partnership Approach

Like others in the NHS, we have experienced extreme pressure on service delivery over the last three months, with clinical staff being away from work through illness or as a precautionary measure. This put pressure on the midweek service, and not wanting to compromise on service quality, rather than scaling back the service, we came up with a much better alternative. By working in partnership with the Portsmouth Hospital endoscopy team, we developed a hybrid staffing model for the endoscopy service achieved by combining resources from across both teams to ensure service continuity could be maintained. As a result of this innovative approach, we are proud that no service disruption was experienced during the 2^nd wave of COVID-19 infection. The Business Manager – Medicine Care Group quoted:

“The Xyla team have always supported collaborative working to ensure patients have the opportunity to receive timely patient care. There was a scenario in January when due to COVID-19 demands on Xyla staff from their own Trust’s meant it might have led to the cancellation of lists. However, due to Xyla staff’s willingness to work as one team with the Trust staff, it resulted in lists being kept open to ensured activity could be maintained. This has been invaluable for the Trust.”

A Strategic Alliance for the Future

Our ambition is to become a strategic partner to the Trust, be fully integrated with their teams, and engage at all levels in planning the best outcomes for patients, staff, and the Trust. We understand and are confident in our role in providing operational flexibility and responsiveness, challenging to achieve in large, complex organisations. We look forward to supporting our colleagues in Portsmouth and across the NHS as services are put in place to recover from the pandemic and improve service accessibility for future patients.