Annual Report 2006/07 - Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Annual Report 2006/07
On Target
This year has been incredibly busy for the
RD&E, with a record number of people
visiting the Emergency Department (ED), and
more patients being cared for across the board
by dedicated staff throughout the Trust. As
ever, everyone has risen to the challenge, and
achievements for the year include:
98% of patients attending the ED were admitted,
discharged or transferred within four hours;
apointment;
max. 20-week wait for inpatient and daycase treatment;
all urgent GP referrals for suspected cancer were seen
by an RD&E specialist within two weeks;
we met the Trust target to provide a treatment decision
for all new cancer patients within 31 days and achieved
94%, against a target of 95%, to treat all new cancer cases
within 62 days of referral. We continue to work closely
with PCTs and other hospitals to ensure that delays outside
the Trust do not affect performance against targets;
all breast cancer patients began treatment within a
month of the appropriate treatment course being agreed;
increasingly, patients have appointments to suit them.
Annual Health Check
In April 2005 the Healthcare Commission introduced
a new system for measuring performance
for all healthcare organisations, called the
Annual Health Check, to replace star ratings.
The Annual Health Check assesses a wider broad
range of issues to help decide whether trusts are
getting the basics right, like meeting national
standards and targets and using resources wisely,
and making and sustaining progress, which
relates to meeting new targets and achieving
good results in improvement reviews. It relies
on gathering information from a wide variety of
sources, and takes account of patients’ views.
As part of this assessment the RD&E also goes
through a rigorous self-assessment process,
measuring progress against 44 core standards,
of which we met 42 for the year 2005/06.
In October 2006 we received the top rating of
‘excellent’ (4 out of 4) for managing resources,
2006/07 Activity (2005/06 in brackets)
Inpatients and day case: 117,080 (112,460)
Outpatients: 257,853 (253,502)
Emergency admissions: 28,804 (28,434)
Emergency dept attendances: 69,964 (62,591)
Babies born: 2,988 (2,972)
and a rating of ‘fair’ (2 out of 4) for quality of
services. This total rating (6 out of 8) puts us
among the region’s best-performing trusts. Our
deliver plans to improve services and provide
new and better clinical environments, like
the new Centre for Women’s Health and the
expansion of the Intensive Care Unit. For quality
of services, although the RD&E was assessed as
having achieved a ‘good’ standard for the vast
majority of indicators, the rating of ‘fair’ for
achievement of a small number of new national
targets affected our overall rating.
progress. Having met 42 of the 44 core
standards, with work to achieve the remaining
two having been completed by September 2006,
all 44 standards, and look forward to the HCC
assessment in October.
Finance
As a Foundation Trust we continue to reap the
must also respond to the greater responsibilities.
As an FT, the RD&E must generate a surplus so that
we are able to fund new building projects, develop
and expand services, and respond to NHS changes.
target, achieving a surplus of £2.9m, giving us the
to meet local need. This is entirely down to the
staff’s hard work, and their continued efforts
management or service improvement is missed.
They deserve sincere congratulations.
MRSA
Only 20 patients acquired MRSA bacteraemia
whilst at the RD&E. Although this is more than
we would like, when compared with the 117,080
patients admitted to the Trust in a year, this
works out as a tiny proportion of patients. We
must still take account of the fact that the
target, our overall measure of success, relates
to MRSA bacteraemia acquired within the whole
healthcare community, and therefore tested
in our laboratory, not just those patients who
acquire MRSA here. We will continue to be
vigilant within the RD&E, and work closely with
community colleagues to ensure that a reduction
in infection rates continues to be a top priority.
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