P-O11 Surgical Ambulatory Care: Reducing surgical admissions whilst maintaining patient satisfaction. Experiences over a four year period
Abstract Background The tri-association document; The future of Emergency General Surgery (2015) has a number of key recommendations for the provision of emergency general surgical care. Key recommendations include for senior surgeons to triage referrals and to utilise a “hot clinic” model. Prior to 2016 in the authors’ hospital, all General Practitioner/community referrals were formally admitted to General Surgery. A consultant led ambulatory clinic with dedicated Advanced Nurse Practitioner support was instituted in October 2016. It offers preliminary assessment, phlebotomy and priority access to routine imaging modalities. The clinic is located in a tertiary hospital serving a population of 500,000. Methods A retrospective audit of prospectively collected referral and outcome lists for the Surgical Ambulatory clinic was conducted for the time periods of October 2016 to June 2021. The two primary outcomes were defined as admission to the General Surgical ward and discharge to the community/non-general surgical specialty. Secondary outcomes for patient satisfaction were measured by randomly distributing over a six week period a patient satisfaction survey. The survey was designed in accordance with trust guidance, was anonymous and would cover multiple lead Consultant encounters as a cohort. Results In total, 9069 patients presented to the surgical ambulatory clinic over a period of 44 months. 2347 (26%) were admitted to the General Surgical ward whilst 6717 (74%) were discharged directly from the clinic. 71% of survey responders rated their experiences of the ambulatory clinic as “Excellent”, 19% “Very Good”, 0.5% “Good” and 0.5% “Poor.” Conclusions The introduction of an ambulatory care model has demonstrated a marked reduction in surgical admissions whilst remaining favourable to the patient populace. This has a direct impact on overall bed occupancy rates. In the age of COVID-19, efforts must me made to reduce the the number of potential inpatient interactions to protect those most at risk. A reduced admission and bed occupancy rate will contribute to the reduction of this risk.