Annual Report and Accounts - The Great Western Hospital

6 QUALITY REPORTS
Part 1 - Statement on quality from the Chief Executive of
the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
6.1 Statement on quality from the Chief Executive of the Great
Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Patient safety continues to be at the heart of everything we do. We continue to focus our energies on
improving safety and patient and staff satisfaction by providing the highest quality care.
The past year has been extremely challenging due to the mergence with Wiltshire Community Health
Services on 1st June 2011. However, it has also been an extremely positive and rewarding year
and provided opportunity for us to develop and improve the quality of care provided for the new
enlarged organisation.
We have regularly monitored our quality improvement plans during 2011/12 via our Patient Safety
and Quality Committee through to Trust Board and through our external reporting and monitoring
arrangements with our commissioners and key stake holders including LINks and local Hospital
Overview Scrutiny Committees.
The priorities for quality improvement set out in the quality Accounts have been chosen to reflect our
goals to improve patient safety, clinical effectiveness and the experiences of our patients. We have
improved care in many areas and delivered some significant service improvements and continued to
develop our services.
We have seen our Hospital Standard Mortality Rates (HSMR) remain below (better than) 100. We
have continued to reduce hospital acquired infections and more specifically we have achieved our
MRSA and Clostridium difficile improvement (reduction) targets. Our staff have led improvements in
many other areas of safety and improved care, including Venus Thromboembolisis (VTE), Ventilator
Acquired Infections and shown a significant reduction in pressure ulcers and harm associated with
patient falls. All of these have contributed to better patient outcomes and experience.
Delivering safe, high quality care relies on a clean and fit for purpose environment and good
equipment. We were delighted that we have received excellent verbal feed back again following our
external assessments of all of our hospital (inpatient sites) by the Patient Environment Action Teams
(PEAT). Formal written reports are awaited. The hospital design and reconfiguration of ambulatory
care and transfer of the AAU department onto Linnet ward has also enabled us to achieve ZERO
mixed sex breaches since December 2011.
We consistently aim to follow and implement best practice in accordance with national
recommendations and alerts and I am delighted to say that we are over 95% compliant with all
published NICE guidance and Central Alert System (CAS) alerts.
We have used the published annual inpatient (PICKER) survey results to focus on improving the
experiences of our patients and we have used our day to day reporting processes to ensure we learn
from complaints, incidents, clinical audits and claims.
We have progressed with the implementation of the regional acute patient safety programme and we
have implemented Executive led quality and safety walkabouts as part of the leadership module
within this programme. These walkabouts now include representation from Non Executive Directors
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