Focus Magazine - Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Would you beinterested in puttingyourself forward forelection as one of ourGovernors?There are three forthcoming vacancies amongstour elected Governors.■ 1 public Governor seat in Keighley■ 1 public Governor seat in Bradford West■ 1 Staff Governor seatA governor’s term of office runs for three yearsand Governors are able to stand for electionfor a second and third term. The process is verystraightforward. You are asked to complete anomination form and provide a short supportingstatement of 250 words maximum. Nominationforms are available from 23 September 2013 andneed to be returned by Monday 21 October 2013.Please see the back cover of this issue of FOCUS for the formal‘notice of election’ which includes all the dates related to the electionsprocess and the contact details for the Electoral Reform Services whichhandles elections for our Trust.Governor informationsessionsTuesday 24 September 2013, 1pm to 2pm orWednesday 2 October 2013, 10am to 11amTrust Meeting Room, Chestnut House, BRI.To support the elections process we have arranged acouple of ‘governor information sessions’ where you canmeet David Richardson, our chairman, and a few of ourcurrent governors to find out more about the role andask any questions you have. If you would like to comealong to one of these sessions then please contact ourmembership office to confirm.Governor informationbookletIf you would liketo find out moreabout the role andresponsibilities ofbeing a governorbefore you makeup your mindabout puttingyourself forwardthen take a lookat our governorinformationbooklet which isBradford Teaching HospitalsNHS Foundation TrustGovernors InformationBookletavailable on-line at www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.ukor contact the membership office for a hard copy.Membership office contact details can ne found onthe back cover.There has been much coverage in the media aboutstandards of care and quality of care. We hopethat the following gives you some insights andassurances about the quality of care provided at ourFoundation Trust and that of other providers.All providers of NHS services are required to produce and publish an annualQuality Account, which is a report about the quality of services they provide.The Quality Account forms part of their Annual Report. The purpose of aQuality Account is to:■ Help NHS providers to focus on the quality of services provided■ Enable the public to hold providers to account for the quality of servicesthey provide■ Enable patients and their carers to make better informed choicesInformation contained within quality accounts should:■ Provide a trustworthy and reliable picture of the quality of services provided■ Be meaningful and relevant to service users■ Be designed to allow comparisons to be made with other NHS FoundationTrusts / previous years’ performance■ Be published in a format that is easy to understand and easy to access.How is the ‘quality’ of services defined?Healthcare providers measure the quality of the services they provide bylooking at:■ Patient safety■ The effectiveness of treatments that patients receive■ Patient feedback about the care provided.What does our quality account tell you?■ How well our Foundation Trust is doing against the national targets we areset by the Department of Health, our local Clinical Commissioning Groups(CCGs) and those we set ourselves as an organisation■ How well we are doing when compared to similar healthcare providers■ Where we need to improve the quality of the services we provide■ Our priorities for the coming year■ It includes statements from stakeholders such as the local Healthwatch andthe CCGs telling us what they think of our Quality Account■ It also includes a statement from our Patient Experience Governor WorkingGroup on progress against the seven membership improvement prioritiesand recommendations for 2013/2014.Our Annual report (including theQuality Account) can be found atwww.bradfordhospitals.nhs.ukFOCUS August 2013 page 7