Opportunity to help shape healthcare services

We are seeking views from communities who use hospitals in the Black Country to help us shape the future of planned healthcare services.

We are currently developing ideas to improve planned (elective) care through the creation of surgical hubs to help:

  • Manage rising demand for services
  • Improve access and patient experience
  • Deliver more joined up (integrated), patient-centred care

Elective surgical hubs are an important part of plans across the NHS to increase surgical capacity and offer hundreds of thousands more patients quicker access to some of the most common procedures. They mainly focus on providing ‘high volume low complexity’ surgery and they bring together skills and expertise of staff under one roof – reducing waiting times for some of the most common procedures. These operations can be performed quickly and effectively in one place.

As part of this focus, we have secured funding to explore the creation of a dedicated elective surgical hub at Sandwell Health Campus in West Bromwich . The idea would see Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust bring together some of their surgical services at Sandwell Health Campus to carry out simple/routine procedures for general surgery, orthopaedics and gynaecology.

But our plans don’t stop there and we are exploring a number of other options, such as:

  • The further development of our services to separate emergency care from planned care through the concept of protected ‘cold site’ surgical hubs
  • Use of these hubs to free up space at local hospitals and bring together a wider range of elective services more efficiently
  • Development of new specialist services locally so fewer patients need to travel outside the Black Country for treatment

So, if you are currently waiting for surgery, have recent experience of planned/elective care, or simply want to help shape a better future for local health services please complete the survey. It is open until 27 July – all responses will be independently analysed and used to inform future elective care improvements.

Please complete the Future of local elective care services – Black Country survey

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Please note: To ensure we gather as many views as possible, we are also conducting community-led conversations with support from partners in the community, voluntary and faith sector. We are hosting stakeholder interviews with key agencies such as Healthwatch and we are holding focus groups.