NORTH WEST London NHS Trust has been shortlisted for a national prize for its development and use of rapid Covid-19 testing in A&E.

London North West University Healthcare (LNWH) was nominated in the Acute Sector Innovation of the Year category of the Health Service Journal Awards.

The nomination was in recognition of the trusts roll out of rapid testing, so A&E staff could identify Covid patients before they were admitted to hospital.

A member of staff noted that "rapid testing was the difference between having to save someone's life in an ambulance outside the Emergency Department versus seeing them in the proper place of care."

The trust increased the number of tests and refined their effectiveness over the year when Ealing and Northwick Park hospitals treated thousands of Covid patients.

As a result, the time taken to confirm Covid positive patients reduced from 17 hours to 13 minutes.

Their system meant faster turnaround times for test results, improved patient safety and better patient flow.

Testing processes developed by the trust were rolled out as a NHS national standard operating process on Christmas Eve 2020, to support other organisations going into the winter Covid wave.