The Christie Foundation Trust Annual Report and Accounts 2021-22

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust Annual Report & Accounts 2021-22

Inpatient Services

Acute Ambulatory Care Unit (AACU) is adjacent to the AAU and provides additional consultation rooms and clinical area for patients with acute oncology related problems. By co-locating these areas, unplanned care pathways and patient flow has been transformed as the purpose-built environment has allowed the Trust to care for emergency admissions of ‘red’ or ‘green’ patients i.e. Christie patients with or without COVID-19. This resulted in prompt access to acute oncology treatment and lessened the burden on wider GM emergency and critical care services. Acute Oncology Management Service (Hotline) is a 24hr telephone helpline service available to our patients, their carers and professionals for advice on management of the side effects and complications of cancer treatments. There has been investment to ensure that the workforce has the capacity and competency to respond to the increase in calls as patients sought guidance and reassurance relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Oncology Critical Care Unit (OCCU) has continued to support GM with continued stem cell transplants, advanced cellular therapy CAR-T and additional surgical activity for patients requiring complex oncology surgery and it has continued to care for patients with COVID-19, i.e. ‘red’ patients who required level 2 or 3 care on OCCU. In accommodating these ‘red’ patients, the Trust has not added to the existing pressures on other GM critical care units. This has ensured that patients with the most urgent or aggressive cancers across GM continued to receive safe and co-ordinated surgical and critical care. Critical Care Outreach Team (CCOT) are a dedicated 24-hour service to support patients who become acutely ill within the Trust, initiating and providing expert clinical care to ensure that treatment is commenced as soon as a patient deteriorates. This year they have been able to resume their training programme and support the Trust with delivering essential life support training to the clinical workforce.

Despite multiple surges of COVID-19 infections, the Trust continued to deliver a comprehensive oncology inpatient service to both support the elective recovery programme and care for emergency admissions for patients with acute clinical symptoms relating to their treatment or disease. Continuing services through the COVID-19 surges has presented challenges and without exception the areas in Inpatient Services have continued to undertake reconfigurations to ensure that the Trust has been able to respond to the dynamic case mix of patients and support Greater Manchester acute Trusts with the management of oncology patients and oncology patients with COVID-19. This continues to be a success as the Trust has not cancelled any inpatient elective oncology treatments due to lack of capacity and has deferred only one emergency patient to an acute Trust since July 2020, unless it was the patient’s choice or clinically appropriate. Patient safety has been the priority and measures have been undertaken on wards to support Infection Prevention & Control with social distancing, PPE and increased cleaning in all areas. Our Services and their Achievements Acute Assessment Unit (AAU) provides a modern purpose-built facility for care of patients who become acutely unwell as a result of their treatment or disease progression and need emergency admission to the Trust. With the rise in the prevalence of community acquired asymptomatic /symptomatic COVID-19 cases, the unit adopted Trust safe admission processes for patients requiring emergency admissions. Supported by pathology, patients have a rapid COVID-19 PCR test which enables AAU to identify positive patients and move to appropriate inpatient areas. The ability to move patients quickly through the unit ensures we maintain capacity for unplanned admissions and elective departments are able to maintain ‘Green’ areas i.e. non COVID-19 areas to continue to deliver treatments or surgery.

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