BOLTON NHS Foundation Trust which runs Royal Bolton Hospital has been recognised for its work in increasing the speed of diagnosis of patients and reducing delays to care.

The trust celebrated a successful evening at the Health Tech Newspaper’s Health Tech Awards 2021, winning gold for its acute medicine referral list, a clinically developed electronic patient list, which also saves clinical time.

Since its introduction it has reduced waiting times for consultant reviews by 34.4 per cent; increased number of patients seen by a consultant the same day by 65.7 per cent; increased number of patients seen by a consultant within national clinical targets by 51.4 per cent and reduced in length of stay by 19.4 per cent.

The system has also saved an average of almost five hours during the early stages of the patient journey

The trust also won gold in the Efficiency Savings of the Year award and received highly commended in the Health Tech Team of the Year award.

Dr Nithin Narayan is Clinical Lead for Acute Medicine at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust and was the clinical lead for the project.

Dr Narayan said: “I am so proud of the entire team for their hard work on our Acute Medicine Referral List.

“To reduce waiting times by 34.4 per cent is a massive achievement, not only in terms of savings for the Trust, but also to help improve the experience for our patients.”

The Acute Medicine Referral List is run in partnership with Allscripts.

The doctor added: “The Trust has an engrained culture of striving for the highest standards of patient care. We have taken our learning from this project and started to apply it throughout the organisation to hopefully see a continued positive impact to care our patients receive.”

The annual Health Tech Awards took place virtually on 7 October, 2021, and recognise NHS, industry and other partners’ efforts to enhance the healthcare sector.