Treatment moving faster at DGRI and waits down

EMERGENCY department waiting times and the length of time people are in hospital are coming down at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, it has been revealed.

Health officials say it’s a sign that new approaches to treatment are starting to work.

The board of NHS Dumfries and Galloway last week heard that DGRI’s emergency department waiting times, length of stay and readmission rates had all fallen. More emergency patients are being seen and either admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours than at any time in the last two years – despite the department being busier than ever.

Much of this improvement has been credited to the new Acute Frailty Unit which opened in April.

Director of strategic planning and transformation David Rowland said: “We can already see the effect the Frailty Unit is having on patient flow all the way through the hospital.

“By providing targeted specialist care to patients with frailty, the unit helps them recover more quickly. That means they’re able to go home earlier – and that in turn allows us to admit and treat other patients more quickly. That’s one of the reasons why, even though more patients are coming into our Emergency Department, waiting times have gone down significantly.

“It’s also reducing the risk that a patient with frailty will have to come back into hospital after being treated and discharged. And that too is reducing the pressure.”

He praised the team behind it and added: “The challenge now is to build on their success and keep working towards the performance targets we have set ourselves.”

So far, 166 patients have been admitted to the Acute Frailty Unit, based in Ward D7, with 132 returning home directly – and with an average length of stay of just 3.4 days. That’s compared to the typical 17.5-day stay previously seen among older patients.

The NHS also say that 82.1 per cent of people who visited the DGRI Emergency Department in June were seen and either admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours – the best result in two years.

They claim too that ‘exceptionally long waits are now almost unheard of” and in June only nine people waited longer than 12 hours, compared with 110 in May,

Meanwhile, efforts to avoid delayed discharges are also paying off, the board heard. The Discharge Without Delay programme has reduced the number of delayed patients from 100 at the end of March to 85 in mid-July.

Acquiring a second CT scanner for DGRI has further helped reduce both delays and length of stay.

In mental health, a new triage system has successfully reduced waiting times in the Children’s and Adolescents Mental Health Service (CAMHS). All young people referred to CAMHS now begin treatment within the target 18 weeks, and the overall waiting list for psychological therapies fell for the sixth month in a row to 709, compared with an average of 988 in 2023-4.