Uniting Care Teams, Unleashing Capacity: Vision’s Blueprint for Rapid Healthcare Access

Executive Summary

VISION partnered with three Chronic Disease Hubs facing outpatient backlogs, inconsistent triage, and bottlenecked diagnostics in their cardiology services. By making true demand visible, redirecting suitable patients to community-led pathways, and unblocking a handful of operational and data chokepoints, we cut additions to hospital OPD lists by ~40–50% and shrank community wait lists by up to 70% in six months.

The repeatable blueprint: a multidisciplinary triage approach using Modernised Care Pathways (developed by the clinical teams—we enabled, we didn’t author them), weekly cross-site operations huddles, short targeted capacity boosts, and full data sharing across care settings. Result: first contact within 10 working days, thousands of avoided OPD appointments annually, and a sustainable model other specialties can lift and drop.

The Challenge

Three dispersed regions (Region A, Region B, Region C) were carrying long and growing cardiology OPD lists. Referrals routinely exceeded available clinic slots, triage criteria varied by consultant, and duplication existed between acute hospitals and community hubs. Key enablers: diagnostics, ICT connectivity, and admin capacity were fragmented or missing. Patients waited months to years for a first appointment, while community specialist teams were under‑utilised.

VISION Promise – What We Did

VISION’s approach combined rigorous demand management with on-the-ground operational change starting with rebuilding trust and collaboration between fragmented teams. Our healthcare consultants’ priority was to get clinicians, nurses, physiologists, administrators and GPs in the same room (physically and virtually), surface pain points, and agree a shared way forward. Rather than add capacity blindly, we:

• Made demand visible and then redirected it. We mapped referrals, wait lists, and throughput; validated long waiters; and implemented prospective, multidisciplinary triage using Modernised Care Pathways (developed by the clinical teams we enabled, we didn’t author them) to stream people to the right place first.
• Operationalised integration. We stood up weekly Scheduled Care Working Groups bringing together acute, community, GP, physiology, admin and ICT stakeholders. Together, we co‑designed SOPs for referrals, triage, diagnostics, virtual clinics, scheduling and discharge.
• Unlocked stuck capacity fast. Targeted, once‑off investments cleared bottlenecks (e.g., outsourced diagnostics, temporary admin, overtime clinics). The “Right Patient, Right Treatment” model guaranteed contact or an appointment within 10 working days of referral.
• Connected the data pipes. We extended secure access to the hospital patient/clinical systems into community hubs to remove duplication, enable shared lists and e‑triage, and accurately capture activity.
• Brought GPs in as co‑designers. We delivered revised referral criteria, virtual GP–consultant clinics, phone surveys and info sessions to drive correct first referrals through the standard electronic referral platform.
• Embedded continuous improvement. Weekly huddles, rapid feedback loops, and national enablement (funding and escalation paths) were put in place to sustain gains.

The Results
Headline impacts across the three regions (combined):

• ~40–50% fewer patients added to hospital OPD lists after prospective MCP triage
• Up to 54% of long‑waiters safely removed or redirected from OPD
• Community hub wait lists cut by as much as 73
  
• Diagnostics unlocked: 700+ extra echocardiograms delivered; ~20% reduction in echo backlogs.
• Throughput and productivity up: acute OPD capacity +50% (80 → 120/month) and hubs +12 nurse‑led patients/week (≈480/year).
• Diagnostics DNA rates slashed from ~23% to ~2% through better scheduling and reminders.
• All >12‑month OPD waiters cleared in one region; routine waits cut from ~30 months to <9 months.
• First contact within 10 working days embedded as the standard (“Right Patient, Right Treatment”).
• l/remote clinics piloted with strong patient satisfaction and avoided travel/time costs.

If your waiting lists feel immovable, let’s talk about a human-first reset that delivers.
Email etreacy@vision.com
Edwina Treacy. Programme Manager, VISION Healthcare