The CEO of NHS England has praised staff at our Elective Surgical Hub during a visit to see how we’re reducing how long patients are waiting for operations.

Sir Jim Mackey highlighted “a real sense of pride” and improvements as he visited King George Hospital in Goodmayes.

More than 10,000 operations were carried out last year alone in the hub, which is made up of nine operating theatres.

During the visit, Sir Jim opened the hospital’s new ophthalmology waiting area and was even given a taste of performing cataract surgery on a dummy eye.

Since the hub opened in June 2024, we’ve carried out more than 4,000 eye operations, including one on a patient aged 103.

Sir Jim Mackey said:

This is an organisation that’s had trouble over the years, but there is fantastic leadership and now we’re starting to see new things happening.

There’s a real sense of pride in what people do, and you can see the improvements.

The alignment between managers, clinical staff and operational staff is fantastic.

Our Chief Executive Matthew Trainer said:

Sir Jim was invited in to see the fantastic work our surgical teams are doing to cut waiting times and give people quicker access to care that makes such a difference to their lives.

He spent a lot of time talking to our clinical and operational staff about what it’s like to work here. He left us with some insights into the way that the NHS is developing and had some really uplifting words for us as a team.