Dear colleague,

The strike by junior doctors ends at 7am tomorrow (Saturday 17 June). While we prioritised our most urgent patients, such as our cancer patients and those who have waited a very long time for treatment, we’ve had to rearrange 1,688 outpatient appointments, and 49 non-urgent surgeries in this latest industrial action.

In total, over the three strikes, we’ve had to rearrange almost 6,200 outpatient appointments and 450 surgeries. I’d like to apologise to patients impacted and offer my reassurance that our teams are pulling out all the stops to ensure appointments are rescheduled as quickly as possible.

Colleagues have also been working hard to ensure we have emergency cover during the strike and we were helped by the opening of our new Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) department at King George Hospital in the week before. It’s already having a positive impact on our performance, enabling us to see and treat patients on the same day so they don’t have to be admitted. My huge thanks to everyone involved to get this up and running.

In light of the above, I thought it would be helpful to share our performance against most of the key NHS access standards - waits in the emergency department, people waiting for treatment, cancer waits - and how we are doing with our money. I’ll be providing these monthly and I hope you find them useful. Performance slides 16 June 2023 [pdf] 251KB

I wanted to say a huge thank you to former Redbridge mayor, Cllr Thavathuray Jeyaranjan, and his son Jeyaranjan Vimalann, who visited Queen's Hospital with an incredible donation of £27,119, to help improve facilities for our young patients. No one likes being in hospital and for children it can be particularly tough. We are extremely grateful to Cllr Jeyaranjan for supporting King George & Queen’s Hospitals Charity and this donation will make a huge difference.

We've been awarded veteran aware status by the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance (VCHA). We know that the men and women who are currently in the armed forces, and those who have served in the past, may face a number of healthcare issues and we’re committed to doing everything we can to provide them with the best possible care. I’m delighted we’ve recognised in this way.

Lastly a couple of brief reminders. I mentioned some of our doctors are helping patients by holding a 30-minute walk, jog, or run with them at Raphael Park on Saturday 24 June at 3pm. Please do join them; it’s a really fantastic initiative. Find out more on our website.

And our Annual General Meeting is taking place virtually on Thursday 6 July from 9.15 to 10.45am. I hope you’ll be able to join us.

Best wishes.

Matthew Trainer