Annual Members' Meeting 2021

Strategic Objective 3: Modern Healthcare

Delivering the most effective and efficient treatment and care through standardisation in the delivery and outcome of clinical services.

Our key achievements over the last year are:

Keeping our community and Team ASPH safe during the pandemic

Keeping ourselves, loved ones and our community safe has been the main priority for the Trust during the pandemic.

As part of this work we have taken the opportunity to build on the huge amount of transformation we have achieved throughout. We have set a new ‘North Star’ objective within the ‘Together we Care’ strategy and for the Trust that seeks to:

End health and care acquired infections for the team, patients and the community we serve.

To achieve this we have created and implemented a new, fit-for-purpose, modern operating model, trengthened by our innovative and robust Infection Prevention and Control strategy launched in March 2020. So far, this has been hugely successful with the Trust recording some of the lowest cases of hospital acquired COVID across Surrey.

Virtual and digital clinics at ASPH

In October 2019, the MSK therapies team at ASPH began trialling video consultations, as part of the NHS England and NHS Improvement national video consultation pilot. Due to the COVID pandemic, the pilot was rapidly rolled out Trust wide in early 2020, which meant that hundreds of appointments were taking place by video consultation each week.

Feedback from patients has been positive around the implementation of video consultations at ASPH. Around 90% of patients that were surveyed following their video consultation, felt that their needs were met during their appointment and gave a star rating of 4.5/5 stars for the platform being ‘easy to use’. Patients also reported benefits like saving time from travelling to and from appointments, saving money on travel, car parking and childcare arrangements and a reduction in time taken off work for attending appointments.

Due to the successful shift to both video and telephone consultations, ASPH is now looking to maintain 50% of outpatients to take place virtually, which aligns with The NHS Long Team Plan to committing to reducing travel mileage, improving patient care and experience, and improving efficiency and capacity of outpatient services across the NHS in a sustainable way.

Large scale site transformation

The completion of land sales at both sites in 2018/19 was a milestone in the history of the Trust. Despite the pandemic we have made good progress with a number of large healthcare estate improvements, which will help to transform services and enhance facilities for Team ASPH and our community, including:

Improving emergency care provisions at St. Peter’s Hospital

Following the Trust being awarded £15m for improvements to emergency care provisions, work is progressing at pace to construct a new two floor unit which is being built in the old Emergency Department car park at St. Peter’s Hospital. This new unit is an exciting development which will have 62 trolley or bed spaces across the two floors, with treatment and clinical support rooms, offices, staff rooms, and changing facilities on both floors. A key part of this space will be a new Priority Assessment Unit to enable patients to be safely discharged home within 24 hours, diverting patients from our busy Emergency Department. Co-designed by clinical teams, patients and partners to provide an enhanced, fit for purpose department for adults, children and young persons that supports Trust objectives and ensures patients are treated in the right place, at the right time.

This move will bring a number of key benefits to patients and Team ASPH. Having a dedicated elective site aligns with the NHS Long Term Plan (2019) which will help to ensure that inpatient beds can be dedicated to either emergency patients arriving via A&E or for patients arriving for planned surgery.

All St. Peters patient car parks are now ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) equipped so there is no need for a ticket to enter or exit and includes 8 electric charging points.

New catering facilities

We have officially unveiled new staff and visitor catering services, as part of a move to offer a long-term food solution across our sites. The services, which include a staff estaurant and three cafes, have been launched across the Trust, giving staff and visitor’s access to safe, modern and commercially viable areas to reset and refuel across the Trust’s two hospitals.

The menu has also been updated and offers a more diverse food offering, which has been received really positively by the team. We have also launched an app which enables members of the team to pre-order their food and drinks and collect at a convenient time for them, making the ordering process more efficient and reducing queuing times. With more than 90 per cent of the food being freshly produced onsite, the Trust is in line to quickly meet requirements set out in the Hospital Food Review – a recent programme launched by celebrity chef, Prue Leith and Phillip Shelley, chair of the Review and a Former Chair of the Hospital Caterers Association