National Cancer Action Team

Enhanced Recovery

Enhanced recovery is an evidence-based approach which enables patients to recover from surgery and leave hospital sooner. The approach aims to ensure the patient is in the best possible condition for surgery, has the best possible management during and after his/her operation and the patient experiences the best post-operative rehabilitation.

The Enhanced Recovery Partnership was established in order to support spread and adoption of enhanced recovery in England. The partnership is between the Department of Health, the National Cancer Action Team, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and NHS Improvement.

The main aim of the partnership has been to support the NHS to implement enhanced recovery for elective surgical patients in the four specialities Colorectal, Gynaecology, Urology and Musculoskeletal, but we are now starting to spread this approach into a wider range of clinical areas. We are working closely with the SHAs to support clinical teams to implement enhanced recovery locally.

Commissioning for Enhanced Recovery

Commissioners can play a crucial role in encouraging primary care, secondary care and social care to work together to implement enhanced recovery and improve commissioning of end to end pathways. For further details see the publication below, 'Fulfilling the potential'

Audit of Enhanced Recovery

A national audit toolkit is available free and has been developed to allow any trust to audit implementation of their local enhanced recovery pathway. The tool allows users to run one of 15 pre-defined benchmarking reports or to download their data for local analysis.

The tool is available at: https://www.natcansatmicrosite.net/enhancedrecovery/

To apply for a user name and password please go to: https://www.natcansatmicrosite.net/erpaccessrequest/

PUBLICATIONS

Two new publications from the ER partnership were launched at the ER summit on 30 April 2012.

'Fulfilling the potential: a better journey for patients, a better deal for the NHS'

This publication shows how enhanced recovery can be spread beyond the original four specialities. It has a wealth of examples of how this has been achieved. Our challenge now is to ensure that all patients benefit from this approach.

'My role and my responsibilities in helping to improve my recovery'

This patient leaflet has been designed, tested and evaluated by patients for patients in order to give practical step by step advice to anyone prior, during and after surgery. It can be used alongside existing patient information to support key messages and encourage patients to take an active role in their preparation and recovery from surgery .