Annual Report and Accounts - The Great Western Hospital

Business Review / Management Commentary /
Operating and Financial Review
3.5 Review of the Trust’s Business
The Trust’s Annual Plan submitted to Monitor (the regulator of Foundation Trusts) sets out the
organisation’s priorities for delivery during the year. Listed below are some of the important issues
which the Trust dealt with 2011/12 and improvements that the Trust has made over the course of
the last year.
The Trust continues to make progress towards the six strategic objectives which guide the
direction of the Trust. Key developments during the year towards achieving each objective are as
follows:
1. To provide consistently high quality, safe services which deliver desired patient
outcomes and we will perform in the top 25% (upper quartile) of comparable acute trusts
in delivering Hospital Standardised Mortality Rates (HSMR), patient satisfaction and staff
satisfaction.
Quality and safety remain our top priorities as we want patients to be confident they will receive
the best care possible, whether they access the Emergency Department at the GWH or are
cared for at Warminster Community Hospital or at home. The Trust continues to focus on
ensuring that there is a consistently high standard of care provided across all wards and
departments to improve patient experience and remove the variability in standards that
sometimes exist.
During the course of the year the Trust has:
• Expanded the Productive Ward Programme to include all Community Hospitals in
Wiltshire. The first phase of this work began at Savernake Hospital at the end of
January and the programme is designed to ‘buddy’ a community ward with a ward at the
GWH to share experience and learning from the wider Productive Ward Initiative which
has been in place at the GWH since 2009. Details of the benefits of the Productive Ward
are included elsewhere in this report (section 3.22.1 refers).
The Trust has also expanded the programme to cover Theatres and will see more
nursing time released through improvements in ward and theatre working, time which
can be reinvested back into direct patient care.
• The Medical Director has introduced a regular safety briefing aimed at Junior Doctors
but relevant to all clinical staff featuring important ‘calls to action’ around specific safety
issues. The first issue was published in March 2012 and has been well received
therefore it will become a regular tool to engage clinical staff on the safety agenda.
• Overall our safety performance through the year has been good showing strong
improvements in many areas. As evidence, at a meeting of NHS Chief Executives in the
South West in January, the Trust and the wider NHS in Swindon was commended as
one of the best performing places in the country for infection control, as a result of the
significant efforts to tackle Clostridium difficile in particular.
• Following three Never Events during the course of the year, the Trust invited Plymouth
Hospitals to visit the Trust to share their learning from similar experiences so that safety
practices could be strengthened. This work has led to the re-launch of a Safer Surgical
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