Over recent months, we’ve been engaging with residents, stakeholders and staff to understand their experiences of health and social care and how they think we can improve services. This formed a large part of our work to refresh our ‘clinical strategy’ – a plan which sets out how we deliver hospital services in the best way, for local people, that are sustainable for the future. Thank you to everyone who has been involved.

We must take the time it needs to get this right. Due to the challenges of the new Omicron variant of Covid 19, and the operational pressures of winter, our clinical teams need to focus on providing the best possible care for our patients. This means we need to pause any further work for now.   

We’d like to take this opportunity to share what you’ve told us so far.   

We worked hard to ensure as wide a range of residents and stakeholders could be part of the process, taking on board the learnings from previous work, and were delighted so many of you chose to share your views.

We’d like to thank our partners, including our local authority and Healthwatch colleagues, for their support in promoting the opportunities. A highly visible campaign, targeted social media adverts, tailored messaging for our community groups and working closely with our faith leaders, resulted in more than 1,200 responses to our online survey. You can read the results of the survey which looked at your experiences not just in our hospitals, but across a range of healthcare services such as GPs and pharmacists.  

More than 50 of you attended our series of virtual listening events across each of our boroughs, where we found communication was a consistent theme; we’re looking to see how we can start improving this now. Other priorities included reducing waiting lists, improving GP services and the need for mental health facilities. Read more in our report.

Our strategy cannot focus on our hospitals in isolation – we must work very closely with our Health Scrutiny Committees, Health and Wellbeing Boards and the Borough Partnerships to address the challenges in health and care for residents. The views of our stakeholders have been invaluable, and we thank them for their commitment. Their insights have already helped to identify several opportunities.

And of course, a huge thank you to our staff, our Patient Partners and our clinical strategy champions for sharing their ideas and for their support in delivering the programme to date.

Matthew Trainer, Chief Executive, said: “We must make sure our clinical strategy meets the needs of local people, and with the current clinical pressures we need to dedicate our time to provide the care our residents need.

“We’ve made good progress in recent months which will hold us in good stead when we restart the work. I’d like to thank our residents, stakeholders and staff who’ve been involved so far and I look forward to progressing this work together next year.”