HOSPITAL bosses say stroke care is improving in Dorset due to a cross-county collaboration amid a major shake-up of services.

Care models are being created locally to act as examples of the way hospitals can integrate services across the country.

Poole Hospital and Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals and Dorset County Hospital are working together more closely as part of the ‘Developing One NHS in Dorset’ acute care collaboration ‘vanguard’. Fifty vanguards were selected from across the country to lead in developing new care models which will act as blueprints for the NHS moving forward.

Work from the Dorset vanguard will feed into the county’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan – a partnership of NHS organisations and councils set up to develop proposals amid ‘unprecedented challenges’ facing the health service.

Ten work programmes have been established locally to explore ways the hospitals can work better together to share expertise and resources across the hospitals. These cover stroke, ophthalmology, women’s health, paediatrics, cardiology, non-surgical cancer, pathology, radiology, health informatics and business support services.

Developing One NHS in Dorset’s Programme Director Steve Killen said the vanguard has been instrumental in establishing strong co-operation between the three hospitals.

He said: “Over the last two years clinicians and managers from all three hospitals have come together for the benefit of Dorset patients as a whole like never before.

“Traditionally each hospital trust has worked very much as separate entities. Now they have a shared vision and a set of agreed principles which can help when the going gets tough and we need to have those difficult conversations.

“Today’s NHS is facing unprecedented challenges and there’s been a recognition across Dorset that we have to change the way we deliver services if we are going to be able to sustain high quality treatment and care.”

The stroke teams have already seen results, according to the vanguard, with the stroke performance improving ‘significantly’ for each hospital.

Clinical Lead for Stroke Dr Suzanne Ragab, from Poole Hospital, said the key to success has been a willingness by all the stroke teams to collaborate, share and work together for the benefit of their patients: “Clinical teams from each of the acutes haven’t worked so closely together before and it was a significant culture change initially.

“The Dorset vanguard has offered a forum that supports collaboration and we have since adopted a real ‘Team Dorset’ approach from a stroke perspective. Now we are all benefitting from sharing good practice and working on joint solutions."