Chief Executive (Interim) Board report July 2026
CEO (Interim) of BHRUT
I am delighted to be taking on the role of leading our Trust. Over the last four years, working alongside Matthew Trainer (who is becoming the Chief Executive at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust), we have improved our performance, stabilised the organisation and leadership after considerable churn and made it an organisation where people enjoy working and patients want to be treated.
We have also taken on some considerable challenges, including the procurement and implementation of an electronic patient record (EPR). Inevitably, with a change programme of this size, we are still experiencing some difficulties in a few areas.
However, the benefits of our move away from the digital dark ages have been considerable, not least on the wards where more time has been freed up for clinicians to spend with patients. We are also still at the foothills of delivering the benefits of the EPR to our patients, via the NHS App.
Facing the future
As I look to the future, I’d like to thank Matthew and wish him well at King’s. He’s been a brilliant colleague and friend who has always focused on our patients and our staff.
My priorities will be to build on our achievements and ensure we run good quality hospitals and services for the people we serve. An example of our pioneering work in surgery was on display last month when a rare and highly complex bowel cancer procedure was carried out at King George Hospital (KGH). The patient is now recovering after the operation at the KGH Elective Surgical Hub.
When care doesn’t go well, I want patients to know that if they have an issue with any aspect of their treatment, they will be listened to appropriately and their concerns will be acted upon.
Working with our partners
We will also develop further the work we’re doing with our partners, especially in our three boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge. We are part of a national programme in Barking and Dagenham that will bring services for those with long-term conditions closer to their homes. Developing a neighbourhood health service is another of our priorities and we will do this with our borough partners.
Our finances
Another of my key responsibilities will be to work with senior leaders, and NHS England (NHSE) colleagues, to deliver our savings plan for this financial year and reduce how much we spend, so that we stick to our planned deficit.
We are currently spending around £250k a day more than we receive, and this is £81k a day more than we planned.
We have shown in the past what we can achieve collectively. Five years ago, we spent £43m a year on high-cost agency workers. This year the bill has reduced to £6m. We need to harness that drive and apply it to our work to save £51.9m in this financial year.
Our clinical groups and corporate areas are identifying ways in which expenditure can be reduced without adversely affecting patient care and we are working hard to sign these schemes off so they can start to deliver real savings.
Better patient care. Better value for money
We are also adopting a bottom-up approach to our savings campaign under the banner, ‘Better patient care. Better value for money’. We’re working to improve financial knowledge in the Trust with drop-in sessions for staff so that it is easier for everyone to understand the financial position and the role they can play.
Across the organisation, individuals and teams have been demonstrating how innovation, collaboration and a focus on quality can improve the service they provide while also costing less. This work will continue throughout the year.
The speech and language therapy team are on track to save around £300k a year by enabling patients to eat and swallow sooner which improves outcomes and reduces the length of hospital stays; pharmacy colleagues are looking to exploit the introduction of electronic prescribing to ensure medicines are given to patients in the most effective way; and a change in the way incontinence products are used in ITU will deliver annual savings of around £13k.
Going green
Our sustainability drive is better for the environment and also reduces our expenditure. Thanks to a grant from Great British Energy, we’ve installed solar panels on the KGH roof which will generate up to 15% of the energy the hospital uses and save around £175k a year.
Other planned green saving initiatives include installing solar panels at Queen’s Hospital; improving light fittings across the Trust; and reducing plastic waste by cutting the number of plastic gloves we use. We bought 23 million pairs in the last financial year.
Improving urgent and emergency care
I am proud of the fact that, in May, four out of five patients (80.8%) who were seeking urgent and emergency care were admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours.
To provide some context, in May 2022 - just two months after I’d joined BHRUT - our All-Types performance was 58.5%. We expect to achieve the latest NHS target of 82% by March 2027.
We were the best performing trust in London, despite it being the busiest month ever with an average daily attendance of 1,043. Our ten busiest months have taken place since 2024, with three of them in the first five months of this year. We still have a lot more work to do and we’re committed to continue improving our urgent and emergency care.
Corridor care
We are also continuing to embed and sustain the improvements we introduced at the end of last year to make caring for patients in A&E corridors a thing of the past. At Queen’s, where the problem can be most acute during busy periods, we delivered 16,000 fewer hours of corridor care in February and March when compared with the same months the year before.
The improvements align with our ‘Better patient care. Better value for money’ campaign as we’re using fewer temporary staff which, across a year, could result in a saving of nearly £2m.
We are succeeding because we are tackling it as a whole hospital problem - with wards being encouraged to move suitable patients to the discharge lounge each day to free up beds – rather than just leaving it to A&E staff to resolve. We have two same day emergency care units at Queen’s (one medical, one frailty) where specialists assess, diagnose and treat patients when they arrive so that they can go home on the same day.
We are working with nursing homes, GPs and the London Ambulance Service to ensure that, when appropriate, frail, elderly people receive their treatment elsewhere and avoid having to visit busy A&Es. We’re also running a pilot where these patients are seen by a multidisciplinary team on arrival at Queen’s to establish their care needs and whether they can avoid admission.
Patients with mental health needs
It’s a topic (especially the experiences of young people and looked after children) that Matthew returned to repeatedly in his CEO Board reports. With the help of NHS England colleagues, we are working with NELFT, our local mental health provider, to improve the experience of patients with mental health needs who end up in our A&Es.
One of the initiatives NELFT has introduced is twilight shifts, at both hospitals, for their psychiatric liaison staff. It’s too early to say what concrete impact this work is having. Initial indications are that patients with mental health needs are spending less time in our A&Es, but the number of these patients isn’t reducing. NHSE has indicated that it is looking for measurable improvements.
Cutting our waiting list
I was pleased to officially open two new MRI scanners at Queen’s last month that represent a major improvement for both patients and staff. Not only can we carry out scans more quickly, the image quality is also significantly better which will help us diagnose patients as early and as accurately as possible.
The reduction in the time it takes to scan will allow us to see more patients each day and reduce waiting times for important diagnostic tests. We completed 49,138 MRI scans last year. The other advantage of the new machines, which we installed with the help of our PFI partners, is that they are less cramped and should help those who feel anxious or claustrophobic.
Celebrating our staff and volunteers
It’s always good when we can celebrate the successes and achievements of colleagues. On International Day of the Midwife we highlighted the vital role our 358 midwives play in caring for women and their families every day; International Nurses’ Day gave us an opportunity to thank our 2,700 nurses who come from 90 different countries; and Estates and Facilities Day reminded us of the wide range of roles our colleagues in these departments perform across our Trust.
Our 326 volunteers play a key role and have already completed more than 12,000 hours of activity this year. They include Pat, who decided to volunteer after having a cardiac arrest; Darren and Martyn who look after the Lavender Garden at Queen’s; and Mark, who lost both his legs in separate accidents, and who visits the trauma ward to “share positivity and inspire others”.
Fiona Wheeler