We are proud to be one of the top performing NHS organisations in the country. We have worked hard to achieve this, and we continue to strive to improve even further and ensure our we provide the best possible care we can.
We do this in a number of ways:
Safety and quality priorities
Each year we prioritise a number of areas that we focus on to improve the safety and quality of our care. This coming year, 2019-20, these priorities are in the following areas:
- Frailty
- Flow
- Deteriorating patient
- Staff experience
- Cancer
- Bereavement
- Maternity
- Every contact counts
You can read more about how we aim to make improvements in these areas in our safety and quality priorities below.
Service reviews
We run a rolling programme of reviewing our services to make sure they continue to provide excellent care. They are assessed against the criteria set by the Care Quality Commission for safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led care.
Measuring the quality of clinical care
Each year different speciality services undergo clinical audits where we measure the quality of their clinical practice against agreed best practice standards and criteria.
This includes checking we are meeting clinical guidelines and infection control standards, that we are following safety processes before operations, and that patients receive the right information and advice they need. After an audit, teams identify any actions they need to take to improve. You can read about our latest audits here in our annual report.
We are keen to involve patients and carers in the clinical audit process, and working in partnership with Healthwatch we held a public engagement event which you can read about here
Ward and service assessments
We run a quality improvement programme called 15 steps where clinical and non-clinical staff visit a ward or service unannounced and assess the quality of care. They talk to patients, carers and staff about their experiences, examine cleanliness, observe interactions between patients and staff, and check records.
The ward and service teams receive immediate feedback and develop an action plan to address any issues identified by the assessment. These assessments are used to both share best practice and to make any improvements needed.
Our quality strategy
Our five year quality strategy provides staff with a clear focus. It aims to ensure that quality of care underpins every decision taken by every member of staff and to provide the safest health and care service to patients.
We actively encourage staff to come up with ideas and make suggestions, and support them to make these a reality and make a difference, no matter how big or small.
Ensuring patients understand their medication
Our ‘keep calm and ask’ campaign encourages patients and their families to ask any questions they may have about medication before they, or their loved ones, leave hospital.
This followed feedback from patients that they are sometimes unclear and confused about new medication they have been given whilst in hospital.
Measuring the success of a service
We take part in a national programme called Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS), where all of our patients who are undergoing a hip or knee replacement, varicose vein surgery or groin hernia surgery are surveyed.
Patients are asked about their health before and after their operation to help measure the success of the operation from the patient’s point of view. The questionnaires aim to collect information to measure and improve the quality of healthcare services offered by different hospitals across the NHS.