Partnering with Leeds Teaching Hospitals to drive efficiencies in Cardiology

Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust (LTHT) is one of the largest and busiest acute hospital trusts in the UK, employing more than 21,000 staff who care for nearly two million patients a year. Its Cardiorespiratory Clinical Services Unit (CSU) is based at Leeds General Infirmary and is responsible for providing Cardiac Services across Leeds Teaching Hospitals’ seven sites.

In 2019, Philips and LTHT signed a seven-year Managed Service partnership, extending to 10 years in 2023. The partnership set out to create a Cardiology service fit for future demands by upgrading outdated facilities to the latest, cutting-edge image guided therapy equipment. It includes six fully featured interventional cardiac suites based on the Philips Azurion platform, providing an intuitive, seamless approach for minimally invasive procedures - supporting Leeds’ clinicians with patient care.

The Trust aimed to build on its nationally benchmarked, high-performing cardiology services by further improving workflow efficiency, quality, and patient experience. To do so, the Trust needed to address several key challenges:

To tackle these challenges, the Trust and Philips launched a joint service improvement project as part of their Managed Service partnership.

Launched in November 2022, the Cath Lab service improvement project set out to enhance performance by using data to identify opportunities and applying the three key drivers of change - people, processes, and technology - to deliver and sustain meaningful improvements.

During the project’s ‘Assess’ phase, the team gathered and analysed data from key systems (CVIS and PAS) to set a performance baseline using agreed metrics. They also conducted interviews and observations to uncover further opportunities for improvement. In the following ‘Co-design’ phase, staff engagement events were held to review these findings together. Staff then identified and agreed on two main priorities to improve patient flow:

In the ‘Transform’ phase, multi-disciplinary Cath Lab teams focused on the two main priorities during improvement sessions led by Philips and the Trust’s Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO). Together, they developed solutions using the three levers of people, process, and technology, and created action plans for implementation. The main goal was to recover lost capacity caused by delays in start times and patient turnaround.

“Sharing the improvements with staff and celebrating the successes has motivated the team to deliver continuous improvements. The visibility of the improvements demonstrates the direct impact on our ability to care for our patients in a timely way, driving down waiting times and improving productivity. We are looking forward to using data to continuously monitor our performance and identify further areas for improvements which will also help sustain and further develop our services.” Gina McGawley, General Manager, Cardio-Respiratory Clinical Service Unit, Leeds Teaching Hospitals

After implementing the solutions, the team measured their impact by comparing post-implementation performance to baseline data during the Sustain phase. This approach demonstrated clear benefits, including:

These improvements were tracked using a Cath Lab service dashboard, ensuring ongoing review and sustained performance gains.

Engaging staff was central to the project’s success, in line with the Leeds Improvement Method. Staff at every level -especially Cath Lab clinical leaders - were actively involved throughout, laying the foundation for sustained and continuous improvement. Engagement and improvement sessions not only drove change but also offered staff valuable development in structured improvement methodologies, helping them use data to identify actionable insights for better patient experience and workflow efficiency.

The introduction of CareCube’s operational informatics enabled clinical leads and managers to monitor Cath Lab performance and key metrics in near real-time, supporting timely decision-making. Establishing a service dashboard with metrics from the CareCube EaSi module was key to sustaining improvements and further boosting staff engagement by providing clear, timely feedback on performance.

Benefits summary for the managed service improvement project

Improved workflow:

- Real-time visibility of departmental activity through the CareCube scheduling solution, enabling continuous improvement in patient flow and performance.

- Identification of critical improvement areas by analysing cardiology workflow data (CVIS) and establishing a clear performance baseline.

Staff benefits:

- Data-driven improvement, with clinical leads and staff participating in engagement and development sessions, building capabilities even when time was limited.

- Enhanced transparency, as staff created their own service dashboards for team-based performance reviews

Service outcomes:

- 40% increase in on-time first case starts compared to 2022, thanks to new scheduling practices.

- 40% reduction in turnaround times and improved lab utilisation, achieved by streamlining lab/ward interactions and recovering lost capacity.