Vascular services for County Durham and Darlington

Healthwatch County Durham conducted a survey and a series of listening and informing events to gather local people’s experiences of vascular services, their views on the reconfiguration of these services, and to share what was important to them as a patient or carer. This work was undertaken as vascular services in the North East were to be reconfigured from being delivered by four hospitals to three. The survey was developed by NHS England and NHS Improvement; Healthwatch County Durham facilitated the events, captured feedback and collated the responses to the survey to produce an independent report of the findings.

Findings from the survey and events included that: the vast majority of patients travel by car to hospital and this is unlikely to change in the short-term; and patients had mainly received good pre- and post-operative information and advice, but many had not received information about support available to them in the community.

Healthwatch County Durham made recommendations around: ensuring patients and families are provided with the information they need about travelling to hospital; providing patients with information and advice about the care they will receive both pre- and post-surgery, as well as the support available to them in the community; and repeating the survey after 12 months to monitor patients’ satisfaction levels following the changes made to the vascular surgery services.