The impact of the North Bristol model across 40 trusts

Trusts which have adopted controversial “North Bristol-style” continuous flow models have seen mixed results, with the approach contributing to worsening performance in some places, research by HSJ suggests.

HSJ found that at least 41 trusts have adopted the North Bristol model, or similar approaches, and has analysed their ambulance handover and long accident and emergency waits performance – the key areas the model is designed to improve.

One leading A&E performance expert Steve Black, who helped develop HSJ’s methodology for the analysis, said the findings underlined that “the evidence we have seen so far that the North Bristol model has worked is not enormously strong”.

The analysis shows 19 of the trusts adopting versions of the model had fewer ambulance handover delays over 60 minutes in winter 2023-24 than in 2022-23 – but at 22 of the trusts there were more of these delays last winter.

This comes despite ambulance handover delays improving slightly in this period at a national level.

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Source: HSJ, 28 August 2024