Wolverhampton NHS trust gains national recognition for liver services

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) has been awarded Improving Quality in Liver Services (IQILS) level two accreditation by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).

Based across New Cross Hospital and Cannock Chase Hospital, the trust’s liver service is one of only eight to have been accredited in England, Wales and Northern Ireland after the scheme was launched in July 2017 by the RCP to improve quality in liver services.

Dr Ian Perry, liver service lead and consultant gastroenterologist, who has been with RWT for 17 years, said: “I’m delighted that we’ve established a growing and improving service over many years, to provide high quality care for patients with liver disease in Wolverhampton.

“It’s a big team effort and it’s taken lots of hard work from lots of people, but we’ve been fortunate in having the support and investment from the management team at the trust in being able to appoint consultants, nurses, physician associates and support workers to help this often marginalised group of patients.

“It has slowly evolved, going from strength to strength, building up different elements over the years.”

At New Cross, the team consists of five liver consultants, an advanced clinical practitioner, three clinical nurse specialists (CNSs), two physician associates and a team of gastroenterology nurses across two wards – A7 and A8 – as well as the drug and alcohol team.

The liver service also includes a team operating a day-case unit at Cannock, led by Maria Tan, advanced clinical practitioner – gastroenterology and hepatology.

This comprises six registered nurses, one healthcare assistant and an administrative officer.

Maria said: “It’s a great achievement to share and it’s a real team effort led by Dr Perry, and Sundeep Chahal, Hepatology CNS.

“This shows RWT liver services’ high standards in line with other healthcare organisations across the country.”

Between them, the service has three functions – an outpatients’ clinic at New Cross, seeing approximately 1,500 patients per year, a day-case unit at Cannock and inpatient wards at New Cross.

The teams look after patients with jaundice, abnormal liver function tests, bleeding from the stomach and gullet, liver failure, ascites (fluid in the abdomen) alcohol excess, fatty liver, viral (hepatitis B, hepatitis C) and auto-immune conditions.

Of approximately 2,880 treatments being delivered per year in the day-case unit, about 960 are liver-related.

In addition, the teams look after outpatients at the drug centre in Wolverhampton city centre and the prisons at Oakwood and Featherstone, and work closely with the drug and alcohol team, which is based at New Cross.

Sundeep applied for level two status in 2021 on the team’s behalf, a process which involved evaluation of documentary evidence, on-site inspections by IQILS assessors, as well as the submission of data relating to how quickly patients were seen and how well they were looked after.