The fourth and final episode of NHS Providers' podcast series highlighting work to tackle care and treatment backlogs offers fresh examples of what trusts and their partners are doing to tackle these delays, and the factors that lie behind them.

Previous episodes have looked at the context and scale of the backlogs challenge, including the need to priorities health and race equality. The case study series has included successful initiatives by mental health, acute and specialist trusts. The concluding instalment features examples of community and ambulance services working to ease backlogs.

Providers Deliver: Tackling ambulance and community services backlogs focuses on:

• work by Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to facilitate early discharge of patients to continue their recovery at or close to home
  
  
• the role of the clinical hub run by Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust at its emergency operations centre to ensure patients receive the right care first time, easing pressure on other services
  
  
• support for teachers provided by speech and language therapists from Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust, helping children to develop their language, communication and social skills.

The interim chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said:

"This series has shown how trusts and frontline staff are harnessing skills, ingenuity and commitment to make a difference for patients in their work to tackle backlogs.

"Trust leaders understand only too well the disruption and distress these delays can cause.

"We know that despite the huge challenges the NHS faces in dealing with backlogs, alongside so many other pressures, brilliant work is being done, delivering real progress.

"It is important to promote and celebrate these successes, not just in terms of elective backlogs which understandably receive a lot of attention, but also in mental health, community and ambulance services.

"In doing this we have also emphasised the importance of addressing health and race inequalities which have been so harshly exposed during the course of the pandemic.

"This podcast format has given voice to the trust leaders and frontline staff behind these great initiatives.

"As the NHS comes under growing critical scrutiny, we will continue to highlight the great work being carried out by trusts, often in collaboration with partners in systems, to ease backlogs and to help people stay well."