Hospitals staff, volunteers and charities thanked by Trust

The Annual Report and Financial Accounts 2009/10 for The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has been formally adopted at its Annual Public Meeting.

The Trust’s chief executive, John Saxby, acknowledged the progress made by the Trust over the past year. He said: “In the last 12 months we have continued to make good progress in many areas, particularly in our continued efforts to reduce healthcare acquired infections, such as MRSA and Clostridium Difficile, across all our hospitals and in reducing our mortality rate which has seen a steady improvement year on year. In 2009/10 we invested £46 million on new developments and capital programmes and spent £10 million on medical equipment.

“Last year has seen the first stages of reconfiguring services across the north east of Greater Manchester as outlined in the Healthy Futures and Making it Better programmes.

“The Trust, like other Trusts across the country will not be immune from the current financial pressures facing the NHS. The Trust is in an excellent position to meet these challenges, having once again met its financial duties to the Department of Health last year. Nevertheless, difficult decisions will have to be taken and new ways of working will need to be adopted to increase productivity, find efficiencies and reduce costs to ensure we can continue to provide safe, high quality and sustainable services.

“The Trust’s ambition to become an NHS Foundation Trust is progressing well. We see real strength in local people and all our staff becoming members of the Foundation Trust. All members of the Foundation Trust will have a vote to elect a Governors’ Council which will hold the Trust Board to account on behalf of local people. Listening to and working with local people and our staff is important in making sure our services are fit for the future. I would encourage you to join up as a member of our Foundation Trust.

“The Trust Board and all Trust staff are committed to providing high quality services and to making a real difference to our patients. Through a programme of constant improvement, we strive to be the first choice hospital for local people and to be regarded as a valuable asset for the communities we serve. We continue to focus on quality and patient safety first. By getting our performance right for our patients we will ensure we live up to our mission statement “to provide the very best care for each patient on every occasion”.

The Trust Chairman, John Jesky, also took the opportunity to praise and thank the Trust’s10,000 staff and 800 volunteers for their commitment and valuable contribution.

Mr Jesky said: “I would like to thank Medequip4kids who have raised and donated a staggering £250,000 for medical equipment to support children’s services at the Trust over the last three years. Also to Link for Pink who have reached their target of £160,000, which has allowed us to start work on the conservatory extension to the Victoria Breast Unit at The Royal Oldham Hospital. And finally, to our 800 volunteers who give so freely of their time to the Trust; to everyone who has donated to our charity and helped us raise over £500,000 last year, to each and every one of our 10,000 staff and to you, our communities, for supporting and challenging what we do.”

In 2009/10 the Trust spent over half a billion pounds (£544,860,000) on providing secondary acute healthcare services for local people through its five hospitals – the equivalent of over £1.4m a day. It has invested £47 million on capital programmes and in maintaining and improving the physical estate and on smaller projects to develop front line clinical services.

The Trust saw 306,602 accident and emergency cases (up 10.5% on last year), 739,022 Outpatients (up 2.9%), 82,220 day cases (up 2.4%), 128,675 inpatients (up 3.7%) and delivered 10,404 babies.

Key achievements 2009/10:

• A continued reduction in hospital-acquired MRSA bacteraemia infections (by 10% last year) and hospitalacquired Clostridium Difficile infections (by 26%) to levels below the targets set.
• A new permanent children’s Accident & Emergency department at North Manchester General Hospital opening in June 2009.
• A new £32m purpose built children’s, maternity and neonatal building at North Manchester General Hospital opened in June 2010.
• The “Christie at Pennine” development at The Royal Oldham Hospital opened in March 2010.
• New specialist clinical haematology unit and new in-patient surgical wards opened on the upper floors of the new £17million building in July 2010.
• The Trust named as one of the CHKS 40 Top Hospital Trusts again in 2010.

The Trust employs around 10,000 staff and runs Bury’s Fairfield General Hospital, North Manchester General Hospital, The Royal Oldham Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and also has services at Birch Hill Hospital.

The Annual Public Meeting was held at The Royal Oldham Hospital education centre on 30 September 2010. The annual report is now available on the Trust website at www.pat.nhs.uk