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Patients to benefit from £10m funding boost

Patient care provided by West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust will be among the services benefiting from a £10m funding boost to accelerate the recovery of routine NHS services.

NHS England has announced Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System is to receive a share of £160m in funding and extra support to implement and evaluate innovative ways to increase the number of elective operations they deliver.

As a result of the extra funding, more patients will receive access to faster treatment for elective care procedures from teams of hard working, dedicated health care professionals from across the system.

Examples of what works well in Suffolk and north east Essex and the other ‘elective accelerator’ sites will feed into both the regional and national plan for elective recovery.

Nick Hulme, chief executive at the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: "This additional funding is strongly welcomed.  Treating so many Covid patients over the past year along with additional safety measures has inevitably had a knock-on effect on non-urgent care, but with the virus hopefully in retreat thanks to the extraordinary success of the NHS vaccination programme, our mission now is to rapidly recover routine services."

Stephen Dunn, chief executive at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Today’s announcement is excellent news for patients in our community, who will be able to benefit from new approaches to their care that will help us treat more people, more quickly.

"Waiting lists are not about numbers but about real people and this funding will help us make a vital difference to the everyday lives of our patients."

As part of recovery plans for elective care announced in March, GPs, specialists and their teams are also focusing on those on the waiting in most urgent clinical need and who have been waiting longest.

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