Celebrating our staff

“If I can do it, you all can do it. Apprenticeships are the way guys!” Oluwole Adeyiga offered these words of encouragement last month at a reception for our apprentices in the Palace of Westminster. The event, organised by Dame Margaret Hodge MP, is captured in this video.

Oluwole, known as Baba, started as a porter 12 years ago and now works as a radiographer. He’s a beneficiary of our apprenticeship programme that has been described as a “real trailblazer”. We have 400 colleagues on the scheme which means we are members of The 5% Club. One in three of them are studying leadership and management and their ages range from 17 to 61.

We’re committed to making our Trust an attractive place to work and to ensuring our staff develop their careers. We’ll be recognising some of their achievements in July.

Inspired by the celebrations we held to mark the 75^th birthday of the NHS, this year’s events - for some 6,000 colleagues and relatives - will include an afternoon tea for our 300 volunteers; a graduation ceremony for those who’ve gained academic qualifications while at work; a family fun day; and long service awards. Around 500 people will be honoured for passing one of these milestones – 10, 15, 20, 30 or 40 years of service.

There’s one other achievement I’d like to mark. Callum Oubridge, a life-long Hammers fan, has been named as the club’s Community Champion for 2024. It’s part of the Premier League’s “more than a game” campaign. Callum, who’s a supervisor in the Education Centre, was instrumental in the creation of our Men’s Health Network. He’s being recognised by West Ham for what he’s doing to improve the mental health of colleagues through social events outside of work.

Protecting our staff

When you visit Queen’s and King George hospitals you will be struck by the visually arresting posters and banners declaring no abuse, no excuse. If you pause to read them, you will learn how Mohammed had his teeth broken, Yvonne was punched in the stomach and Theo was told to go to the jungle where he belonged. Their accounts are painful to read, but necessary to share as all were victims of patients and visitors.

These incidents have more than doubled in three years – 36 in January 2021, rising to 75 two months ago. As well as encouraging a minority to reflect on the impact of their violent, aggressive and racist behaviour, we are also making it more straightforward for a colleague to ‘red card’/ban an abusive patient or relative from our hospitals when it is clinically safe to do so; we’re introducing 60 new body-worn video cameras in our A&Es and frailty units; and we’re increasing the visibility of security officers to provide support.

Working with partners

I know, from talking to colleagues across health and social care, that we are not alone in seeing an increase in abuse. It’s one of the many topics of shared concern that we discuss with our partners. These conversations are vital as we would be failing our residents if we operated as an isolated organisation.

We have our closer collaboration with Barts Health that is delivering, among other things, an electronic patient record next year. The two trusts are now exploring what more can be done in partnership with Homerton Healthcare to improve and broaden access to services, as part of what’s known as an acute provider collaborative.

We’re also working hard on ways to deliver more joined up care in our boroughs through the Place Based Partnerships that have a focus on prevention and reducing health inequalities.  A good example of this approach being put into action was the latest health and wellbeing event in Barking and Dagenham. We were delighted to take part and our staff provided advice on sexual health, bowel screening and the importance of maintaining good heart health. 

The 7,500 people who attended could also see a GP, without an appointment; have their blood pressure taken; and get free advice about healthy living, including stopping smoking. This work has a positive impact on the prevalence of hypertension, something that affects many of our patients. Those in the borough on the London Living Wage who smoke spend, on average, 11% of their gross annual income (£2,451) and it costs the council more than £78m each year.

Our collaborative work in Redbridge includes a project that is examining how people access diabetes care and what gets in the way of them receiving it. In Havering, we continue to support the winter wellness events in the borough and we will undertake some work to measure their impact.

Urgent and emergency care

We are making demonstrable improvements in the provision of urgent and emergency care and we were pleased to show Channel 4 News how this was benefitting residents. In January - despite a nine per cent increase in attendances (2,383 people) - nearly 6,000 more patients were treated within four hours in our A&Es and Urgent Treatment Centres (UTC) compared with the previous year. In the same month, Queen’s Hospital dealt with 711 more ambulances compared with January 2023.

Our all types performance was 74.1% and we are working hard to achieve NHS England’s recovery target of 76% this month. We’ve moved from being one of the worst performing trusts in the country to being in the top 25 per cent.  

We’ve been helped by our colleagues at PELC, a GP cooperative. They run the UTCs where the less seriously ill (type 3) patients are seen and they’ve transformed the service they offer. When it comes to those who are most seriously ill (type 1), one in two of them (50.7%) were treated within four hours – our best January performance in more than five years.

We’re determined that patients spend as little time as possible waiting in the back of an ambulance. We’ve reduced these handover delays significantly and the striking results at King George Hospital (KGH) prompted NHS Providers to feature us as a case study.

Virtual wards

As is evident to those who read this report regularly, there is no single solution to reducing delays in our A&Es. One of our initiatives is our virtual ward that is helping, at any one time, up to 30 frail and elderly patients avoid having to seek treatment via these crowded and noisy departments.

Under this ‘hospital at home’ scheme, a multi-disciplinary team - made up of senior doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers and support staff - is delivering care in the community. More than 200 patients have benefitted so far; 91 per cent of them have rated the service as good or very good; and the cost of looking after them is less than if they’d been admitted to one of our wards.

Our progress, which has been achieved with the help of partners in north east London, has meant that NHS England has reduced the level of support and oversight we receive. NHS North East London is the only system in the country to move from tier 1 (intense support) to tier 2.

I am conscious, when I write about what we have achieved, that there is more to do and too many of our most seriously ill patients (type 1) still wait too long. It’s why we’re keen to secure the £35m needed to redesign the A&E at Queen’s. The work will help eradicate the use of beds in the corridor, tackle the overcrowding and improve the department for patients and staff.

Cutting our waiting lists

The strikes by junior doctors continue to hamper our efforts to reduce waiting times. The 39 days of industrial action have meant we’ve had to rearrange 17,283 outpatient appointments and 1,244 non-urgent surgeries.

Without the strikes, it’s likely we would have reduced to zero the number of people waiting more than a year for treatment. However, despite the industrial action, we have cut this list down to 1,276, a reduction of more than 500 patients compared with December 2022. Of those who are still waiting, 272 have moved to us from Barts Health to help them tackle their delays. Overall, 750 of their patients have transferred so far. 

The total number of our residents who have been referred and are waiting for treatment was 64,454 in January. The majority require an outpatient appointment with one of our specialist teams.

Those who need surgery will benefit from the two extra theatres that will open soon at KGH. Last year, 7,613 operations took place at the KGH Elective Surgical Hub. The £14m extension will allow for 100 additional operations each week. When Wes Streeting MP, the Shadow Health Secretary, visited KGH last month he spoke of how our work was “ground breaking and nationally leading”.

Delivering timely cancer diagnosis and treatment was a challenge for us at the start of the year and we are actively addressing issues we have around staffing, delays in histopathology reporting and diagnostic capacity. This will be boosted by the opening in the coming months of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDC) at Barking Community Hospital and St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub. The CDC at Barking alone will allow for 60,000 more scans each year.

In the meantime, we’re planning so called ‘blitz’ diagnostic and theatre sessions to reduce the backlog. We’re also working with Barts Health on a pilot to detect bowel cancer earlier.

Our finances

For the past five years, Nick Swift, our Chief Financial Officer, has helped us cut waste, improve our digital capability and move into a position where we will, hopefully, soon exit financial special measures. I’ve benefitted from his experience, insight and focus on how we deliver what’s best for our patients. Nick is leaving soon to travel around the world and he’ll be replaced by Mike Gilham, our current Director of Finance.

It's fantastic to see someone from a local school, who started here on work experience, move into this Board level role. Mike is a great appointment and I’m delighted he’s joining the Executive team.

 

Matthew Trainer

Chief Executive

March 2024