Dear colleague,

The latest NHS England A&E performance figures shows we exceeded the A&E recovery target, treating 77.5% of patients within four hours, even with March being our busiest month ever.

Compared to March 2023, 7,300 more patients were seen, treated, and either sent home or admitted within four hours.

Our recent improvement is great achievement and is down to our staff and to the colleagues who run our urgent treatment centres.

Despite this, we know too many patients are still waiting too long and too many of our sickest patients are still having a poor experience.

In March, many of our elderly patients had to spend the night on beds in the corridors of our emergency departments due to overcrowding and long waits for admission. This puts what we’ve achieved in context, and we have a lot more work to do to put an end to corridor care.

This will be helped by a number of developments including a frailty unit at the soon to be opened St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub in Hornchurch; our new Same Day Emergency Care department at King George Hospital that has seen its first patients; and a redesign of the emergency department at Queen’s Hospital.

First in London to trial new treatment

It’s a great boost for our Trust to be chosen as the first hospital in London and the second in the country to trial a new treatment for patients with aneurysms.

The new Artisse intrasaccular device treated three patients last month and is a less invasive procedure using mesh to fill the aneurysm from inside.

Benefits including reducing patient’s recovery time and is an easier procedure to carry out according to the team.

For the first procedure, many visitors from across the country and the world visited Queen’s to observe it as there have been less than 100 of these procedures completed across western Europe.

Our piano is back!

For those who have visited Queen’s recently, you may have heard the sounds of our popular piano which has returned.

After moving it during the pandemic, we had lots of requests to bring it back because it really does lift the mood and atmosphere in the atrium.

Of course I had to have a go myself but our stay player is a gentleman called Colin. Over the years, he’s raised over £17,000 for our hospital charity and has been one of greatest supporters.

He is often playing in our atrium and it’s great to see him and the piano back.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive