Dear colleague,

Happy new year.

2023 saw us start to make real progress in improving urgent and emergency care at our Trust.

Opening a Same Day Emergency Care unit (SDEC) at King George Hospital (KGH) and expanding our SDEC at Queen’s, a new Discharge Lounge at Queen’s, and strengthening our clinical and site leadership all helped us end the year being the most improved for emergency care in England.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) also raised the ratings for urgent and emergency care at Queen’s Hospital and KGH from inadequate to requires improvement.

In their reports, following an inspection in October and November, the CQC commented on how staff felt respected, supported and valued; and they treated patients with compassion and kindness.

They said the patients they spoke to were complimentary about the care they received, and we had many of our A&E ratings improved at both sites. I’m pleased they recognised the work that’s taking place.

There is still a lot more we need to do and we still have too many people waiting too long for care, but, the inspectors have confirmed that we are heading in the right direction and that’s a great credit to our teams.

Looking ahead

As we look ahead to 2024, we will continue to focus on improving our urgent and emergency care. Our new Surgical Assessment Unit at Queen’s, which has seen its first patients, will help us do that.

It will help people who turn up to A&E and need surgery get treatment more quickly because they’ll go straight to the unit for assessment and treatment, which in turn will help take the pressure off our busy A&Es.  

We’re also looking forward to this spring which will see us open our Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) at Barking Community Hospital and our £14m expanded Elective Surgical Hub, which includes two new theatres, shortly followed by our CDC at St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub.

These will help us provide our local communities with better and quicker care.

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive