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‘A year like no other’, our Chief Executive reflects over past year as we publish our Quality Account
We’ve published our Quality Account, which captures how we’ve performed against our priorities over the last year, and sets new ones for the coming year.
With the pandemic impacting most of our work throughout 2020/21, there was much to reflect on.
In his introduction our Chief Executive, Tony Chambers (left), said: “Whilst it has been a year like no other, quality of patient care has absolutely remained at the heart our decision-making and response.
“When we seek to understand quality of care, a key element to consider is how we learn and adapt to current best practice quickly and effectively – and the pandemic has affirmed agility and flexibility are real strengths across our organisation. Wards were flexed speedily, according to numbers of Covid-19 inpatients; our ITU capacity was increased five-fold and an ITU renal unit was set within just ten days after learning the impact of the virus; a new multi-disciplinary programme was developed and implemented to support our clinic teams; and we converted a frailty unit almost overnight into an oxygen receiving unit when oxygen flow became a problem, not just in our hospitals, but nationally.”
The challenges of the pandemic, including staff sickness, infection prevention control measures, and fear of coming into hospital, has, as with the rest of the NHS, heavily impacted on our performance against the national standards.
Our priorities over the coming year will help us tackle this, including delivering our planned trajectory for reducing the number of patients waiting over a year for treatment, as well as reducing the number of cancer patients waiting over 62 days for treatment.
A series of high-volume clinics we’ve been running, including our recent Bones R Us week, are also helping us to get higher numbers of patients the care they need, while reducing our waiting lists.
Looking after the wellbeing of our staff will continue to be one of our highest priorities, particularly as we know that high-quality patient care is linked to this. We implemented a raft of measures extremely quickly to support our staff during the pandemic, including wellbeing hubs at both our hospitals and seven-day psychological support. We also held a dedicated Thank You Week.
You can read our Quality Account, on our website.