We were pleased to welcome Helen Whately, the Minister of State for Social Care, to King George Hospital this week where she recognised the ‘amazing work going on’ in A&E and our frailty ward which reflects the improvements in our performance.

In the past year, our teams across both sites have been working hard to reduce the waits our patients face in our A&Es and improve patient flow.

As a trust we are no longer the lowest performer in London when it comes to treating the most seriously ill patients (Type 1) with our performance having increased by 20 per cent over six months. We are also out of the bottom 20 per cent nationally.

Minister Helen Whately said: “It was great to visit King George Hospital yesterday and see for myself the amazing work going on.

“The passion and commitment of staff came through loud and clear as they showed me some of the recent initiatives to speed up emergency care, reduce admissions and improve care for patients.”

One of these key initiatives that she saw was our Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) department.

Our SDEC at King George sees more than 50 patients a day who are moved out of A&E to be assessed, treated and diagnosed on that same day.

Helen Whately also heard of our plans to expand our SDEC department in the new year after we received over £2million funding. It’s due to open in March 2024 and will provide additional capacity to help us treat even more patients every day at King George.

There was also an opportunity for colleagues on our frailty unit on Beech Ward to update the Minister on our virtual ward for frail and elderly patients.

This helps us to provide care for some of our most vulnerable patients in the community rather than in a hospital. 

Louise Dark, Managing Director at King George, said: “We enjoyed having Minister Helen Whately visit our site and learn about all the great work that we are doing.

“We got to discuss some exciting plans which are going to help us continue our improvements and I want to thank the Minister for taking the time to visit.”