The West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT) is an innovative collaboration, which brings together the six NHS trusts (Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust) who deliver acute hospital services across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. The purpose of the association is for the hospitals to work together on behalf of patients to deliver more joined up, high quality, cost effective care.
In previous bulletins we shared with you that we have submitted recommendations to NHS England for two arterial hubs for vascular services in West Yorkshire: Leeds General Infirmary, co-located with the Major Trauma Centre, and Bradford Royal Infirmary. The hubs will provide all elective arterial and acute work as well as high risk Interventional Radiology (IR). Day case (minor surgery), diagnostics and outpatient clinics will remain at the local hospitals.
As part of our recommendation, we agreed that vascular services in West Yorkshire will be delivered as a single service across the whole of West Yorkshire, bringing together the expertise and resources from all five trusts. A communications plan is being finalised, linking with NHS England around consultation planned for May (post elections). A briefing will go out to all staff shortly to bring them up-to-date with the development of the service, public consultation process, etc.
Work continues to develop and examine the future of pathology services in the WYAAT footprint. A single network for pathology in West Yorkshire and Harrogate is being developed, aiming to increase quality, invest in new technology; develop our workforce and increase efficiency and productivity.
To help with understanding of how the local systems fit together it has been agreed that the WYAAT brand will become a clearer sub-brand of the Partnership. Further detail will emerge over the coming months.
Following extensive public engagement over the last two years around the future of safe and timely hyper acute stroke care, a new process for the way patients requiring hyper acute stroke care is now in place. Under the new way of working, patients requiring hyper acute stroke care will be taken directly by ambulance to a larger hyper acute stroke unit - most likely to be Leeds or York - in order to ensure that the treatment they receive is timely and effective. Patients will be transferred back to Harrogate District Hospital as soon as possible after initial treatments or discharged home and will receive their ongoing rehabilitation care locally.
The Communications Team from NHS Providers will be meeting with WYAAT’s Communications Leads Group in June to hear about and discuss the progress of WYAAT and how we’re working together as six hospital trusts.
The WYAAT trusts’ communications leads are working together as part of the wider Partnership to support engagement around the NHS Long Term Plan, and the successful launch (and follow-on communications) of the ‘Our neighbours’ campaign.
We have launched a twitter account @WYAAT_Hospitals with the hashtag #hospitalstogether. Follow us to find out more about all the work going on.
