Children’s NHS trusts are award finalists for their work tackling waiting lists

For more than a year, children’s trusts across England have been working together to tackle waiting lists – and this week their work has been shortlisted for a prestigious healthcare award.

This collaboration from the Children’s Hospital Alliance (CHA) – of which Sheffield Children’s is proud to be part – has been shortlisted for the Performance Recovery Award in the HSJ Awards, recognising outstanding contribution the collective has made for young patients.

The shortlisting reflects the work the hospitals have been doing to tackle waiting lists for children following COVID and reduce the impact of health inequalities on patients and their families. By working co-operatively, the hospitals are able to share innovations and ideas at the cutting edge of care – improving care for children and young people across the country.

The Children’s Hospital Alliance comprises of Sheffield Children’s, Manchester, Leeds and Alder Hey in the North, Great Ormond Street and the Evelina in London, Birmingham Women and Children’s in the Midlands, and Southampton, Oxford and Bristol in the South West.

Since May 2021 the trusts have increased the number of elective patients they are seeing to above the levels they were seeing before COVID, resulting in 38,000 more patients receiving treatment. They achieved this through a range of innovative techniques, including using an Artificial Intelligence tool to identify children at risk of missing their appointments, offering patients struggling with costs free transport to appointments and organising extra weekend clinics and outreach programmes through the Super Saturday project.

Alexandra Norrish, Programme Director for the Children’s Hospital Alliance and Development Director at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This really is wonderful news – the fact we’ve been shortlisted for Performance Recovery Award in the HSJ Awards 2022 will undoubtedly be a huge ‘pat on the back’ for our amazingly hard working and deserving teams in the children’s hospitals across the country. It’s a real testament to teamworking across services throughout the country to make sure we’re doing the best for the care of children and young people.”

Matt Shaw, Chief Executive Great Ormond Street and CHA Programme Steering Group Co Chair: “This is an amazing achievement for the Children’s Hospital Alliance largely due to the collaboration and our staff working together on recovery performance to achieve more collectively than individually”.

A staggering 1067 entries have been received for the HSJ Awards 2022.

HSJ editor Alastair McLellan, adds; “On behalf of all my colleagues, it gives me great pleasure to congratulate Children’s Hospital Alliance on being shortlisted as a finalist in the category of Recovery Programme. All of the applications represent the ‘very best of the NHS’ and often leave our esteemed panel of judges with an impossible choice!

“We’re all very much looking forward to welcoming our finalists to the awards ceremony in November, celebrating their impressive achievements and jointly acknowledging our values of sharing best practice, improving patient outcomes and continuously driving for better service.”

The full list of nominees for the 2022 HSJ awards can be found at https://awards.hsj.co.uk/ alongside details of the Awards partners; https://awards.hsj.co.uk/partners

The winners will be announced during the awards ceremony at the Battersea Evolution Centre, London on November 17th 2022.