New control centre launches in Cornwall to ease pressure of NHS over winter
It is one of 40 centres monitoring ambulance waiting times and hospital beds
A new control centre has launched in Cornwall to help ease NHS pressures over the winter months.
The System Control Centre is one of over 40 so called 'winter war rooms' going live across England to help get patients in to hospital beds as soon as possible.
The pioneering centres across the UK use data to respond to emerging challenges and can divert ambulances to another nearby hospital with more capacity or identify hospitals that need extra support.
For Cornwall, the centre will allow teams to monitor things like ambulance times and beds that are currently taken in hospital.
Susan Bracefield, chief nursing officer for the Integrated Care Board for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, told us: "The idea of the co-ordination centre is to pre-empt any crisis that come our way so that could be a surge in COVID numbers, that could be a surge in flu numbers, and we know that has a huge impact on hospital beds in particular"
Unlike some other centres in the UK, the Cornwall SCC will not allow patients to be diverted to other hospitals but helps teams across the Duchy to spot pressures before they become critical.
Susan continued: "We've got one hospital and Plymouth is a 90-minute journey on a good day and Plymouth is our specialist centre, so with people that have very specialist needs we send them to Plymouth. It's within our interests to keep Plymouth flowing as well".
"It's co-ordinating services in a way that we haven't had to do before because we haven't had these pressures that are potentially coming our way. We're still recovering from COVID, we are still pulling back our services and getting those back on track".