The impact of elective surgical hubs on elective surgery in acute hospital trusts in England

Melissa Co, Tatjana Marks, Freya Tracey, Stefano Conti and Geraldine M. Clarke ()
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Melissa Co: The Health Foundation
Tatjana Marks: The Health Foundation
Freya Tracey: The Health Foundation
Stefano Conti: The Health Foundation
Geraldine M. Clarke: The Health Foundation

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Elective surgical hubs at acute hospital trusts in England aim to increase productivity and efficiency in planned (elective) surgeries, reduce cancellations, and improve patient and staff experiences by ring-fencing care and focussing on High-Volume, Low Complexity (HVLC) surgeries. Using patient-level hospital data from April 2018 to December 2022, we evaluated the impact of new hubs (operational from 2019 onwards) and established hubs (operational before 2019) on trust-wide rates of total and HVLC elective surgeries using a generalised synthetic control methodology. Here, we show that during the first year of operation, the average rate of HVLC elective surgery in trusts with new hubs was 21.9% (95% CI 11.7%, 32.2%) higher than expected. After the COVID-19 pandemic, trusts with established hubs demonstrated greater resilience, with 11.2% higher than expected rates of total (1.3% to 21.2%) and HVLC (1.7% to 20.7%) elective surgery and 0.17 days (0.28 to 0.061) shorter than expected inpatient lengths of hospital stay. Our evaluation provides robust evidence to inform future priorities for elective care delivery.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60936-6

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