Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust has been shortlisted in five categories at the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Value Awards.

The awards celebrate the best examples of efficiency and improvement in NHS organisations nationwide, and reward projects that demonstrate improved value for money and clear improvements for patients.

Sherwood Forest Hospitals, which runs Mansfield Community and King’s Mill hospitals, has had more shortlisted teams than any other trust in the East Midlands.

They have been nominated in the following categories:

The use of information technology to drive value in clinical services — for the inter-operability link between healthcare and social services programme. This IT-based project is helping to reduce inappropriate admissions of frail elderly people by better integrating with social care to quickly identify if suitable care packages are in place. It reduces the number of vulnerable people who need to stay in hospital and is helping to save money.

Workforce efficiency — for the trust’s Medical Taskforce Programme, which has taken great strides in reducing medical vacancies at the trust. This significantly reduces the amount spent on agency staff in these roles.

Workforce efficiency — the removal of agency healthcare assistants and the development of the vritual ward healthcare assistant team. The trust has not used a healthcare assistant agency worker since February 2017, reducing its spend on agency workers.

Improving the value of surgical services — Preoperative Assessment Streamlining and Risk Stratification. This is recognition for a more efficient ‘one-stop shop’ way of triaging and assessing pre-operative patients for elective surgeries.

Improving the value of surgical services — improving the pathway of patients with, or at risk of, obstructive sleep apnoea. This newly-developed pathway has helped identify patients at risk of sleep apnoea (which can lead to complications during and after surgery) earlier. The project is also helping to reduce cancellations and increasing the number of patients booked in for day-case surgery rather than overnight admission.

Richard Mitchell, chief executive of Sherwood Forest Hospitals, said: “The five nominations indicate we are making huge progress while managing our finances well.

“To have five different teams shortlisted in these awards is a fantastic credit to the innovative work taking place at the trust, and it is a real boost to the teams involved across our three hospitals.

“Last year we won two awards so we have an opportunity to better that this year.”

The award ceremony is in Manchester on 7th June.