Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust unveil quality blueprint plan for next 5 years

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has unveiled a new Quality Strategy for the next five years which sets out a number of quality aspirations and priorities which the Trust and all its staff will focus on to improve patient care and patient experience.

The Trust, which runs North Manchester General Hospital, Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, The Royal Oldham Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary, is seeking to build on the progress it has made over the last few years in improving patient safety, improving cleanliness, reducing hospital mortality and infection rates, and in reducing waiting times across emergency care access, cancer services and surgery.

Marian Carroll, Director of Nursing at the Trust, said: “Our quality aspirations and priorities are the key areas we need to focus on to improve clinical effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience.

"Ensuring the delivery of high quality clinical services is our overriding priority. Our focus must be on how we can create a culture where every member of staff provides the best, most compassionate care for every patient, every time, and delivers services we would be happy to receive ourselves or for our family and friends.”

The Quality Strategy sets out how the Trust will:

• 1Have no never events
• Have no cases of Clostridium Difficile (C Diff) or MRSA
• Have no Trust acquired harm in relation to pressure sores, falls, VTE (venous thromboembolism) or catheter acquired infections
• Have no harm resulting from medication errors and patients who have unplanned returns to theatre
• Have a Trust wide Hospital Standardised Mortality Rate (HSMR) of 80
• Communicate with patients so that their expectations of their treatment are absolutely clear
• Demonstrate through the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) that patients would recommend its hospitals
• Be in the top 10 percentile for all indicators of clinical efficiency
• Ensure staff will want to work here and be treated here if necessary
• Put the patient first and work in a culture of care, compassion, openness and transparency.

Trust Chairman, John Jesky, said: “Everything we do from the ward to the Board is focussed on providing high quality services and to making a real difference to our patients and the local communities we serve.

“The Trust aims to create an environment where quality of care, clinical improvement and patient safety underpins all of our services through strong clinical leadership, innovation and a culture of care, compassion, openness and transparency.

"To achieve this, it is important we listen and respond to our patients and their families, and take the necessary action to improve things.

“Our vision for this Trust is for an organisation where everyone, from the frontline to the Board, puts quality first and makes the quality of care everyone’s priority and concern.

"Our new five year Quality Strategy sets out our quality aspirations and priorities for all our staff. The purpose is to set out how the vision and the transformation of the Trust into a top performing organisation over the next five years will be achieved.

"By focussing on patient safety, patient experience and clinical effectiveness, we will drive up our performance, deliver on the financial imperative, and improve the quality of care our patients and their families receive.”

Annual Report & Quality Accounts

As outlined in its recent Annual Report and Quality Accounts, during 2012/13 the Trust made significant progress in meeting all key national clinical performance standards. These include all national cancer targets, further reductions in healthcare acquired infections and pressure ulcers, a reduction in hospital crude mortality rate, improvements in 18 weeks (RTT) surgery waiting times and meeting emergency access care standards, including the national four hour unscheduled care target.

Despite the unprecedented demand on A&E services and a challenging winter, the Trust achieved the national unscheduled care standards for every quarter last year and for the year as a whole.

The Trust was one of the best performing Trusts in Greater Manchester in meeting the national four hour emergency access standard across its three A&E departments and its Urgent Care Centre at Rochdale Infirmary.

Last year, the Trust also:

• Spent over half a billion pounds (about £1.5m per day) on providing healthcare services for local people
• Spent £38 million on capital programmes, maintaining and improving the physical estate and on projects to develop frontline clinical services
• Spent £6.6 million on medical and scientific equipment
• Saw 329,358 A&E and urgent care cases
• Saw 690,147 outpatients, 235,385 total inpatients and 75,258 day cases
• Delivered over 9,800 babies
• Made 112,000 visits to patients in their own homes to provide treatment/care
• Issued over 1 million items from pharmacy to patients and ward stocks
• Sterilised 230,369 instrument tray sets and 156,626 single instruments
• Provided over 1.4 million meals to patients

The Trust’s Quality Strategy and Annual Reports can be found at www.pat.nhs.uk