Dear colleague,

I hope you had a good Christmas and new year.

I was at King George (KGH) and Queen’s hospitals during much of that period and everyone I spoke to said they’ve never seen pressure like this. It isn’t just affecting our hospitals; I spent a lot of time with NHS and local authority colleagues across north east London who are experiencing similar pressures. Everyone really pulled together, and I’d like to extend my thanks to all our partners for their support.

No one wants our patients to be waiting so long in our A&E departments, at times being cared for in beds in corridors.

Our staff were able to discuss the challenges they face with BBC London who came in to understand more about the pressures we’re under. Junior Sister Alice Kenny summed up their feelings very well when she told the reporter: “We like to look after patients as if they’re our family and can’t do that in the corridor.” It’s a stark and moving piece of coverage and I urge you to watch it. I think it’s vital that our staff get the chance to tell the public what it’s like in our hospitals at the moment. We cannot have another winter like this, and we must spend the coming year thinking about a different way of caring for our patients across the community.

One of the latest benefits of our collaboration with Barts Health is the launch of ‘REACH’ at our Trust. REACH is a Remote Emergency Access Co-ordination Hub staffed by senior clinicians working remotely with London Ambulance to reduce the number of patients brought into A&E who could be better treated somewhere else.

No one wants to be in A&E unless they need to be. When it’s best for a patient to be treated at home, or in the community, their experience is much better. Barts Health have seen some real success with REACH to date and I’m optimistic it will make a significant difference to patients and staff at our Trust too.

In the past, planned care has often suffered at the hands of winter pressures, with operations being cancelled to free up beds for A&E. Our surgical hub at KGH has proven invaluable in ‘ring-fencing’ these beds for planned surgeries and not losing them to patients who come in through A&E.

I’m delighted our hub is one of just eight trusts to take part in a national NHS England pilot accreditation scheme, after which the hope is it’s rolled out nationally. The assessment will take place during January and February, with formal accreditation in March.

The hubs focus in particular on ‘high volume low acuity’ procedures such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements, which will reduce waiting times for these more common procedures.

This week our Care Quality Commission (CQC) Maternity Inpatient Survey results were published. The results are disappointing and we’re working with our Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) to ensure we’re listening and responding to the views of our women.

Improvements already underway include more support for women for whom English is not their first language, including remote access interpreting during consultations, and our MVP is working on ensuring women from minority ethnic backgrounds with more complex needs are supported by a bi-lingual volunteer; and monthly checks to ensure staff are supporting women to make their own informed decisions. Covid visitor restrictions, which were a significant issue to women who responded, have been removed and it was encouraging to read their positive comments such as information to help them feel more prepared, and mothers being put at ease by staff who knew their full medical history.

Also feeding into our improvements for maternity services are the findings to come out of our inspection in September to provide assurance against the seven immediate and essential actions from the interim Ockenden Review. This too showed there is a lot we still need to do; it was also encouraging that inspectors were impressed with the progress we’ve made in providing a good safety culture; the commitment of the new senior leadership to deliver change; and our ongoing efforts to listen to women. You can read more in my November Board report.

Lastly, this week I spoke to councillors at our Outer North East London Joint Health Overview Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC) where Chief Nurse Kathryn Halford and I joined system colleagues to share latest Trust updates and the CQC Inpatient Survey results; and at the Redbridge Health Overview Scrutiny Committee where we discussed the pressures we are under in A&E and what we’re doing to address our four hour emergency access performance. These committees are an invaluable opportunity to inform and involve local councillors and I’m grateful for their support.

 

Best wishes,

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive