Across England, health chiefs are leaving no stone unturned in their search for ways to reduce the elective backlog.
While six of the seven temporary hospitals were closed at the end of the winter wave of covid-19 in April, the Devon ICS chipped in to keep the Exeter Nightingale alive.
HSJ understands all the NHS providers in Devon helped Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust secure the facility – situated on an industrial estate outside Exeter – with the support of NHS England, which had coughed up the construction costs at the outbreak of the pandemic.
NHSE also helpfully selected Devon ICS as an “accelerator site” for its elective recovery programme, meaning the ICS received several millions of pounds in extra funds to tackle the challenge ahead.
Kerry Morgan welcoming one of Project Food s first clients, Laura Newman
- Credit: Project Food
On Monday, February 1, Devon charity Project Food, moved into new premises at Axminster Hospital.
Formerly known as Health and Local Food for Families (HALFF), Project Food provides food education to local people.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the charity has been providing crucial free meal deliveries services to over 40 families and individuals struggling to obtain healthy meals.
More than 50 children on Free School Meals have benefited from Project Food’s meal delivery services while schools were closed, with the charity not just delivering in Axminster, but to all the surrounding villages as well as Bridport, Chard, Seaton, and Honiton.
Senior Devon doctor predicts coronavirus tidal wave heading our way
RD&E medical director Dr Adrian Harris says: We will be hanging on by our fingernails
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A senior doctor at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital has warned that the South West faces absolute crisis due to coronavirus in the coming weeks.
Warns of “inexorably” rising numbers of covid-19 inpatients at neighbouring trust
Hospital chiefs in the South West have warned the region will not avoid the extreme pressures felt by other parts of the NHS amid rapidly rising numbers of covid-19 inpatients.
The region was the least affected area of England during the pandemic’s first wave, but the medical director of two acute trusts yesterday predicted a “tidal wave” of covid-19 coming to the West Country.
Adrian Harris, medical director at Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust and Northern Devon Healthcare Trust, said the region faced an “absolute crisis” and individual trusts would be “hanging on by their fingernails”.