Trust restarts adult non urgent inpatient elective activity

In common with health systems up and down the country, we have been experiencing seasonal high volumes of attendances at our Emergency Departments, in conjunction with difficulties in discharging patients who are medically fit to leave hospital. Seasonal flu has also been a contributory factor.

In response to the challenge, and in line with national guidance from the National Emergency Pressures Panel (NEPP) which was set up to provide advice on winter pressure and clinical risk, we opened additional beds and postponed non urgent operations in order to ensure that we could continue to admit emergency patients in a timely fashion.

In addition, we worked hard with colleagues in social and community care to ensure that the patients in our hospitals who are medically fit to leave are able to get the care packages in place to go home or move to the next stage of their care.

From Monday 5 February 2018 we are restarting adult non urgent inpatient elective activity at the Churchill Hospital, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and John Radcliffe Hospital for most services.

There is no change at the Horton General Hospital or in children's services as they were not covered by the original decision to postpone non urgent operations.

We will review the situation for services in the West Wing at the John Radcliffe Hospital next week with a view to resuming planned operations the following week.

For the moment we will continue to keep open the escalation beds that we have at the John Radcliffe and Horton General hospitals but the additional beds at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre will revert to use for orthopaedic patients.