Current Service Arrangements Sample Clauses

Current Service Arrangements. 3.1.1. Wards 2, 3 and 4 provide inpatient provides inpatient care for patients receiving radiotherapy or chemotherapy and also for patients who require symptom control, and who cannot be managed as outpatients. The wards will also occasionally accommodate patients from other specialities on the Western General Site. 3.1.2. Xxxx 3 provides 8 inpatient beds and Xxxx 4 22 inpatient beds. There are a further two inpatient rooms with radiation protection in the xxxx below (xxxx 2) which are used for radionuclide therapy. Xxxx 2 is currently the Oncology Assessment Area which is the equivalent of the Medical and Surgical Acute Receiving Unit at the Western General Hospital (WGH) and is for patients who have developed acute problems while on active cancer treatment or who have recently completed therapy.

Current Service Arrangements. 3.1.1. The Oncology Assessment Area (OAA) is the Cancer Services equivalent of the Medical and Surgical Acute Receiving Unit at the Western General Hospital (WGH) and is for patients who have developed acute problems while on active cancer treatment or who have recently completed therapy. Patients are referred in from across the SCAN region although, if they self-refer through CTH, they may be asked to attend a hospital closer to home rather than WGH if appropriate. Other routes of referral into OAA include; patients from the treatment floors and the outpatient clinics, by GP’s and also from other departments and hospitals, or self-refer through a dedicated phone line (Cancer Treatment Helpline, CTH). Referrals are received in to OAA out of hours. The patients are triaged, assessed and then treated and discharged, or admitted as appropriate. 3.1.2. It is a service which has evolved and expanded over the past couple of years and is still being developed. Over a six year period OAA has expanded from an area accommodating 3 trolleys to occupying the space of a full xxxx inpatient. This rate in growth is related to the overall increase in demand and activity in oncology; 2016 Cancer Strategy describes that cancer diagnoses have increase by 12% in a decade. The increased demand is reflective of a number of key drivers: • An aging population • An increasing population (9% rise in Lothian 2010-2014) • Increased cancer incidence • Improved diagnostics • Increased screening • Increasing lines • The increasing number of effective treatment options that have been licensed and SMC approved and increasing use of multiple lines of SACT mean that it is foreseeable that demand for acute oncology will also increase. 3.1.3. Specifically for OAA the introduction of the CTH has also contributed to the increase in demand. Due to capacity pressures in Xxxx 1 a proportion of supportive therapies have been displaced to OAA. If the proposal for Xxxx 1 is supported this would enable repatriation of selective supportive therapies in view of the expanded space. 3.1.4. In addition to the different flows of patients through OAA it is also used as “flexible capacity” to accommodate patients when the inpatient demand exceeds the bed footprint within ECC and occasionally to support flows on the WGH site. 3.1.5. Previously urgent cancer patients were referred through the Acute Receiving Unit at the WGH. When this arrangement was in place the 4 hour HEAT standard for 98 per cent of patients...