Bradford hospital trust fails on patient target (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

But governors at Bradford Teaching Hospital's meeting told recovery plan bid would ensure standard was achieved next month

12:00am Thursday 18th October 2012 in News By Claire Lomax

Bradford Teaching Hospitals is failing to meet a target to treat 90 per cent of patients within 18 weeks of them being referred by a GP.

The hospital trust, which manages Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospital has breached the 18-week referral to treatment target for patients needing to be admitted to hospital in May, June, July and August this year.

Performance for May was 87.4 per cent, in June it was 85.6 per cent, in July it was 84.4 per cent and in August 85.2 per cent, against a target of 90 per cent.

Six specialities are a concern: general surgery; oral surgery; ophthalmology; plastic surgery; gastroenterology and ENT.

Chief nurse Sally Napper, yesterday told a meeting of the hospital trust’s council of governors an extensive trust-wide recovery plan had been implemented with the aim of achieving the standard by next month. The Foundation Trust has also breached the number of cases of the hospital superbug C.difficile for the year.

The meeting was told that even though the trust had reported 32 cases in the year to date – nine fewer than last year – this was two over target for the year.

Mrs Napper told the meeting the trust was planning to increase the hospital’s capacity to isolate patients with C.difficile by introducing ‘isolation pods’ – making Bradford only the second hospital trust in the country to do so.

She said it was hoped to have the pods in place by December, which would increase the hospital’s side room capacity by eight.

The trust’s failure to meet the referral to treatment target and the C.difficile trajectory means the hospital trust has incurred two penalty points from independent regulator Monitor, giving it a governance risk rating of amber-red.

Under questioning from governors, chief executive of the trust Bryan Millar said the amber-red rating would have no immediate implications for the trust, but wanted to see performance improve to amber-green.

Other performance issues for the trust include the number of operations being cancelled on the day of operation and the length of time patients wait for diagnostic tests. The meeting was told action plans has also been introduced in both of these areas and improvements were being seen.