The three we are behind on
What we are doing about it
Cardiac readmission — 8.4% against 7.9%
Our readmission rate has been above average for five consecutive quarters. The governance committee's interim finding is that it correlates with our high same-day discharge rate after elective PCI: we send more people home on the day, and a small proportion come back.
We are not planning to reduce same-day discharge, because on balance it is better for patients. Instead, from March a cardiac nurse specialist calls every same-day discharge at 48 hours, and early data suggests that is closing the gap.
Emergency wait — 4h 02 against a 3h target
This is the measure we are least happy with, and it is not a triage problem: nobody in a life-threatening category waits. It is walk-in volume in the 18:00–23:00 window, which has grown 22% in two years.
Two additional emergency medicine consultant posts start in the evening slot this quarter, and a same-day emergency care unit opens in the autumn to take lower-acuity patients out of the main department entirely.
Outpatient letters — 86% within five days
An administrative failure rather than a clinical one, caused by a transcription backlog. Two additional medical secretaries started in February and the figure has already recovered to 91% in the unpublished current quarter.
Publishing the measures we are losing on is uncomfortable and occasionally costs us referrals. We do it because a provider that only publishes its wins is telling you nothing at all.