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Written by Head of Communications
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We are proud of our Quality Accounts for Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals (ASPH), for 2010/11.
Quality Accounts are annual reports to the public about the quality of services that providers of healthcare deliver and their plans for improvement. The purpose of Quality Accounts is to enable:
- patients and their carers to make well informed choices about their providers of healthcare;
- the public to hold providers to account for the quality of the services they deliver;
- Boards of NHS providers to report on the improvements made to their services and set out their priorities for the following year.
There are three important quality improvement areas:
- safety;
- patient experience and;
- clinical effectiveness.
Our Quality Account contains information about the quality of our services, the improvements we have made during 2010/11 and sets out our key priorities for next year (2011/12). This report also includes feedback from our patients, governors and commissioners on how well they think we are doing.
Foreword from the Chief Executive
Welcome to our second Quality Account for Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This publication describes just how seriously we consider quality and safety issues in our two hospitals and how we work continuously to make the right improvements. We want both patients and visitors to feel confident of the quality of our services, and this Quality Account sets out our priorities for improvement and details how we have performed against some key quality measures over the last year.
However, it’s important to note that this is just one part of our approach to improving quality, and we have in place a number of other monitoring processes and initiatives – for example our monthly Quality Report which goes to the Trust Board – which help us to make continual improvements on behalf of our patients.
In December 2010 we became a Foundation Trust which in itself is a measure of the quality and safety of our services and shows the confidence Monitor, the regulatory body for Foundation Trusts, has in our organisation. We were the first Trust to become a foundation organisation under new, tougher criteria set by Monitor, which is a further indicator of the high levels of quality and safety in our two hospitals. The Board at Ashford and St Peter’s reviews a detailed quality report every month at our public board meeting and take it extremely seriously. To make sure the Board is fully engaged with care right on the front line, we regularly invite patients to come and present to the Board – describing their individual experiences, good and bad. Regular walkabouts around our hospitals, talking to patients and staff, also help our Board members have a good understanding of what it is like to be a patient in our hospitals.
2010/11 has been another very good year for Ashford and St Peter’s with some particular highlights in terms of quality achievements; our maternity services were awarded the highest standard for patient safety, the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts Level 3, which is an assurance that we have put all the right processes and improvements in place to make our services as safe as possible. And in November 2010 the Clinical Pathology Accreditation Office once again confirmed our pathology services had all retained their fully accredited status, the only pathology service within Surrey and Sussex to achieve this. We were particularly pleased that results from the Dr Foster Good Hospital Guide for 2010 showed that once again Ashford and St Peter’s are demonstrating lower than average mortality ratios (90 overall against a norm of 100), with the joint fifth lowest ratio nationally for a ‘basket’ of the most common causes of death in hospital – stroke, heart attack, congestive heart failure, pneumonia and falls.
We have also been recently nominated as a CHKS top 40 hospital as part of their 2011 Top Hospitals Programme, based on an evaluation of a number of markers including safety, clinical effectiveness, outcomes, efficiency, patient experience and quality of care which is a great achievement for the Trust.
Earlier this year a complaint about a patient attending St Peter’s Hospital in 2007 was featured in the Health Services Ombudsman’s report about care of the elderly. This case highlighted several serious issues and we have worked closely with the Ombudsman to draw up an action plan of improvements which are now being closely monitored by our Board. Since 2007, we have made significant improvements, with close attention being paid to discharge planning, nutrition (particularly for elderly patients with complex needs) and improved communication training for staff.
However, there is still more to do on these issues and this is reflected in our priorities going forward for 2011/12.
This case has drawn our focus even more sharply to our commitment to improving patient experience and, in may 2011, we launched a Trust-wide programme, ‘Living our Values’, which will involve every member of staff across our two hospitals. By exposing staff to real patient stories, and the emotions they generate, the programme will demonstrate the impact each and every one of our staff can have on a patient’s experience. Overall I am extremely pleased with the continued improvements Ashford and St Peter’s continues to make in its vision to become one of the best healthcare Trust’s in the country. Our performance to date and our quality reports confirm that our two hospitals continue to be safe places for patients to receive care and treatment.
The information provided in this Quality Account is provided from our data management systems and our quality improvement systems and to the best of my knowledge is accurate, and provides a true reflection of our organisation.
Andrew Liles
Chief Executive
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 28 September 2011 13:32 )
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