I hope this finds you well.

It’s the start of a very busy month for many of us, as we close out the year and make plans to spend time with family and friends over the festive period.

News of the Covid-19 Omicron variant is understandably a concern and currently there are lots of unknowns about the impact it will have and how it may fight against the vaccine.

With a confirmed case of the new variant in Brentwood, it’s crucial that we continue to do all we can to protect ourselves and our families by following the Government’s latest guidance. Christmas is getting closer and public places are getting busier, so if you’ve not had it yet, please book your vaccine.

I must thank our staff, who are working incredibly hard in difficult circumstances. It’s been a very long 21 months and we know we face a challenging winter, so I’m delighted that we’ve introduced a wellbeing campaign to help look after them.

Throughout the month of December, we’re hoping to spread a little festive cheer with increased wellbeing budgets for teams, gift boxes and daily prize draws for staff, special events such as religious services and tree lightings and messages of thanks from our senior leaders.

We must protect our workforce, to ensure they can provide the very best care for our patients. Our hospitals are under pressure but we continue to make good progress as we tackle waiting lists.

Last weekend our Surgery team delivered the Theatres 3.0 project, our latest initiative to reduce the backlog of appointments. We operated on 32 skin cancer patients in just one day, which is triple the number of people usually seen.

The number of people waiting 52 weeks or more reduced from 1,938 in April to below 1,000 in October, and we remain on track to cut this to zero by the middle of next year.

Whether it’s improving the care patients receive in our hospitals or out in the community, my system colleagues and I are determined to improve the services we provide across north east London (NEL).

That’s why I’d encourage you to have your say on proposals for a new integrated health and wellbeing hub in Havering, which will benefit residents across all of our boroughs.

Health and care partners across NEL have been working together to design the hub, which proposes to bring together a range of health, social care and community services under one roof, in a brand-new fit-for-purpose facility.

NEL Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is consulting on these plans until February, so please do join one of the virtual listening events to find out more.

I hope you have a productive week ahead.

Kind regards,

Matthew Trainer
Chief Executive