Drivers

There were three key drivers for the collaborative to focus on the development of a system capacity and demand forecasting tool as part of the elective recovery programme:

1. They recognise that they are stronger together at achieving nationally set waiting targets.
2. They wanted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the mutual aid process by increasing the number of mutual aid transfers before a patient attends their first outpatient appointment. Mutual aid when a patient is already listed for surgery can impact on the likelihood of the patient accepting the opportunity to transfer and can create inefficiencies, such as the need for repeated outpatient appointments.
3. The whole ethos of the initiative is to address health inequalities of access across the four acute NHS trusts and to equalise waiting times.

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