NaNOC gains national standard accreditation
The accreditation recognises NaNOC’s commitment to high-quality patient care and surgical excellence.
Our Norfolk and Norwich Orthopaedic Centre (NaNOC) has received accreditation as an orthopaedic hub for delivering high standards in clinical and operational practice as part of a national assessment scheme.
The scheme, run by NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme in collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and supported by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, assesses surgical hubs against a framework of standards to help these hubs deliver faster access to some of the most common surgical procedures such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements. It also seeks to assure patients about the high standards of clinical care.
Our NaNOC is one of 69 out of the total 126 hubs to be awarded this accreditation. Our neighbour, the James Paget has also been awarded the accreditation.
Our orthopaedic centre, which is separate from the main hospital and emergency services, is part of the national plan to increase capacity for elective care with more dedicated operating theatres and beds.
To secure the standard, the team had to amass a bank of evidence for an accreditation pack including performance data and insights, evidence of improvement on length of stay, patient outcomes, responses to patient feedback and areas identified for continuous improvement. The centre was reviewed in a visit by the accreditation panel on Tuesday 24 March with the final decision on whether they had met the stringent requirement set out by the national Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) team made the same da.
The NaNOC accreditation team comprised Ed Aldus, Associate Operations Director for Care Group A, which focuses on electives, anaesthetics and perioperative care, Cristiana Jorge, Matron for Trauma, Orthopaedics and Spinal Services, Clinical Lead Orthopaedic Surgeon Jim Wimhurst and Ashill Ward sister Kathleen Chandler. They were all were instrumental in designing and developing the £11m centre which opened its doors to its first patients on 23 July 2024.
Jim said: “We want to take this time to say a massive thank you to all who have been involved in the development of NaNOC since its inception, including the N&N Hospitals Charity who donated their biggest grant ever at the time of £2m. Since then the centre has grown in stature and that is down to the team who work day in day out to make the unit run smoothly. It was in that context that we decided to work towards the accreditation. I would like to thank those who were involved on the day and those who were directly involved in providing evidence for the accreditation pack, led by Associate Operations Director Ed Aldus, without whom accreditation would not have happened. It was a huge amount of hard work to collate everything, but this is a great team – everyone pulled together and worked diligently and attentively to get us over the line.”
He added: “One of the standout elements of the accreditation journey was collating all the patient feedback which is nearly universally excellent.
“We all know that there’s lots still for us to do to make NaNOC even more effective. We will ensure that we take lessons from the accreditation journey, and from the upcoming Hub Optimisation week, which is a national project designed to illustrate how efficiently hubs can reduce waiting times if all are run at maximum capacity, to continue improving performance and patient care through NaNOC even further.”