Dear colleague,

You may have seen the news that I will be leaving BHRUT later this year  to become Chief Executive at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust where I started my NHS career.

Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside extraordinary colleagues and stakeholders who care deeply about our patients and residents.

We’ve navigated some challenging periods, but we’ve made real progress together.

We’ve moved out of special measures, introduced a new electronic patient record, improved performance across our services and we secured a Good rating for maternity from the Care Quality Commission.

I’d like to thank everyone for their support. Fiona Wheeler, our Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer, will step into the role of interim Chief Executive.

1 idea. 21 fewer days in hospital. £300,000 saved.

Our key focus over the coming year will be on our savings and seeking better value for money for the taxpayer. An excellent example of this is a recent piece of work led by Speech and Language Therapist Maria Papadaki and the Critical Care team.

Through a trial of a small bedside device that helps restore the swallowing reflex in very unwell patients, the team has helped patients recover faster and leave hospital sooner.

For the 17 patients involved, they were typically able to eat and drink around 20 days earlier, and their stay in hospital was shortened by around three weeks.

Given the cost of a critical care bed is more than £2,000 per day, providing better patient care has translated into an estimated saving of around £300,000.

Congratulations to Maria and the team.

Pathology industrial action

Lastly, we’re disappointed that the Unite Union has called for further industrial action within our pathology service for five days, from 00.01 on Monday 9 March until 23.59 on Friday 13 March.

This will significantly reduce our capacity to test samples. We will prioritise clinically urgent cases, such as tests for cancer patients and emergency patients requiring blood transfusions. We have asked Unite to agree to provide safe cover during the strike, which is standard practice across the NHS to help reduce risks to patients. They are yet to agree.

We recognise this will affect colleagues and have offered to negotiate a level of pay protection that is higher than elsewhere in the NHS. We remain keen to continue negotiating.