September 2019
Hello and welcome to H1, a newsletter named after our new hospital bus route,which is designed to make sure that you and your colleagues are kept up to date with the latest news and activities at Epsom and St Helier.
An update from Chief Executive Daniel Elkeles
It is with great pride and happiness that I can officially tell you we have been rated as GOOD by the CQC. Following the three day inspection during May 2019, and separate inspections on our leadership and how we use our resources, inspectors found a number of improvements and positive practices across patient care, including improvements in surgery, medicine and maternity. As a result, the Trust is now rated as Good for being caring, effective, responsive, well-led and for use of resources and is Good overall.  

Maternity services at both hospitals are now rated Outstanding for being responsive. This is, in part, thanks to the innovative new Pregnancy Advice, which was launched in partnership with South East Coast Ambulance Service, and has meant that pregnant people in Surrey can access services and advice faster than ever before. It also reflects the fact that the Trust was the first in London to be awarded the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative Gold Award

The improvement in our overall rating and in many of our services reflects our absolute commitment to the health and wellbeing of our patients and the babies born in our care. I am so deeply proud of every single member of our staff, and I hope our local communities are proud to have Epsom and St Helier hospitals and our community services on their doorstep.

As a small token of thanks for all that we have achieved, our facilities team will be delivering a selection of Krispy Kremes, cupcakes and fruit to teams across the organisation today.  

I should also mention that the inspection showed that our Trust is performing well behind the scenes too, having assessed whether our services are well-led and whether we use our resources wisely and efficiently. As you will know, whether a health care provider is well-led can have a significant impact on patient care and in fact, the CQC's comprehensive inspections of NHS trusts have shown a strong link between the quality of overall management of a hospital trust and the quality of its services. This inspection showed that our Trust Board had the appropriate range of skills, knowledge and experience to perform their role and senior leaders were aware of the current priorities and challenges of the Trust and knew of the various strategies and measures to address them. We were also awarded a rating of Good for use of resources, which is particularly impressive in an organisation where, because we run duplicate services across two sites, we have a naturally occurring deficit.

But of course, despite all of that good news, the report also highlights areas that need to be improved.  The CQC did acknowledge improvements in A&E but it remains as requires improvement.  We have asked the inspectors to come back soon to look at our emergency departments again, and we are already working on the issues that they have raised and areas that need further development.

Inspectors also noted that in many areas of the Trust, the environment was not always appropriate for the services being delivered, due to the age and structure of the estate. That's exactly why we are investing record amounts of money into our buildings, and are working to secure a £500 million investment into a new acute hospital that will ensure Epsom and St Helier can provide long-term, sustainable services for decades to come.

Dr Nigel Acheson, CQC Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals noted as their report was published. He said:

"I am very pleased that Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust has attained a Good rating overall. Management and staff have worked well to improve from the previous Requires Improvement attainment.
 
"I was particularly impressed with the standard of maternity care at the Trust, which had received a prestigious award.
 
"The Trust is going in the right direction with a management team committed to further improving care in the future."
 
NHS Improvement's Use of Resources rating for the Trust was Good overall. Its rating combined with CQC's Good quality rating amounts to a combined Good overall standard.




You can read the report on the CQC website at:
The Trust says farewell and welcome
This month we say farewell to our Chairman Laurence Newman who will be retiring from the role on 30 September after 10 years at the Trust.

In a message to staff Laurence said:

"It has been a privilege to serve the local populations of Epsom and St Helier for 10 years and to support the incredible staff and volunteers of the hospitals and more recently in the community as they strive for continuous improvement.

"The Trust has a huge amount to be proud of and in the time that I have been there, the team has delivered over 49,400 babies and were the first Trust in London to be awarded the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative Gold Award. We have become a consistently strong performer against key quality standards, meeting or exceeding financial targets for the past three years, seeing patients with suspected cancer in a timely manner, and running one of the best hip fracture services in the country."
 
From October we welcome Gillian Norton OBE DL who will become Chairman of the Trust. Gillian who is Chairman of St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and will become a Chairman in Common for both organisations. This appointment will enable the two largest hospital trusts in South West London to collaborate further for the benefit of the communities they serve.

Gillian said: "I am delighted to have been invited to become Chairman in Common of St George's and Epsom and St Helier, building on the collaborative working between the two Trusts dating back many years.

"Many patients already receive high quality healthcare from both organisations, and I am confident we can further develop the close working that already exists between teams and services across both organisations to improve the way we deliver care."
All Systems Go - make our hospitals flow

Over the summer we have held two 'All Systems Go' weeks, both of which were designed to bring staff together to give us an  extraordinary week of focus to reduce our patients' length of stay across our hospitals.

By bringing together teams from the wards, including our medical, nursing, AHP and operational teams, along with social care, community services, pharmacy, porters, facilities, diagnostics and therapies we were able to identify the hurdles that prevent us from discharging patients from hospital at the point they are fit enough to leave.
We know that our patients do not want to stay in hospital for any longer than they have to, and in fact, it is far better for their health and wellbeing that they are discharged when they are medically fit enough. Our All Systems Go week renewed the focus on the individual patient and the care they need at home or in the community, and help us to unblock the obstacles to timely discharges in a way that should be sustainable. It proved to be really effective at both Epsom and St Helier, with a significant rise in discharges during two very busy weeks, and a significant decrease in the number of long stay patients who were in hospital for longer than 21 days, as well as those staying longer than 60 days.

130 new junior doctors welcomed
During August we officially welcomed 130 new junior doctors to our ranks and held our first Trust Doctor's Engagement Forum. This new forum is designed to bring together all of our locally employed doctors from across our sites and community care, so that we can discuss how we can better support them, improve training and secure places for them in formally recognised training posts and support those of them who are getting ready to take the next steps to being a consultant. It was great to see so many faces at the forum, with so many fantastic contributions to our first of many stimulating events.