Monday 31 August 2015

Thank you

I am delighted to hear that I have been re-elected as a Governor for Guildford. Thank you to all those who voted for me - it's very greatly appreciated.

The next 9 to 12 months are going to be extremely busy because the Competition and Mergers Authority have cleared the proposed merger with Ashford and St Peters and the hospital is now gearing up to finalise the Business Case to submit to Monitor (the body responsible for Foundation Trusts). When I know the time table I will post it.

The job of Governors is to ensure that the hospital Board does two things
  • engages effectively with the public (which includes patients and staff)
  • acts with due diligence i.e ensures all its claims are based on solid evidence and defendable.
If the Board fails in either then Governors are entitled to vote against the merger. They are not legally entitled to vote against simply because they don't  like it!!!!

I will be doing my best to ensure the Board meets its obligations as I have been doing from the start. The Governors' Working Group which I chair will be a key feature in challenging the hospital wherever necessary.

It is now time for the Hospital(s) to actively engage the public and I will push for this to be done comprehensively and in a transparent way.

Thanks again for re-electing me

Wednesday 5 August 2015


Two pieces of good news.

First the Royal Surrey has been successful in bidding to lead a collaborative Surrey-wide service for the treatment of chronic Hepatitis C – one of only 15-20 such services nationally. The new service is a great example of developing strong partnerships and builds on existing collaboration with other Surrey trusts. It means that Surrey patients will be able to access state of the art therapy for liver and biliary tract disease locally without needing to travel to London.
Secondly the Royal Surrey been named again as one of the top 40 acute trusts nationally in the Health Service Journal’s “Best Places To Work” awards.

Mortality performance

 

The latest national figures for performance related to deaths have just been published. The Royal Surrey has performed extraordinarily well. It was ranked 4th best in the country (of 137 hospitals) and had 20% less deaths than would be expected given its case mix. This is even better than reported 3 months ago when it was 7th. It now routinely out-performs its peers – Frimley Park was ranked 22nd and Ashford and St. Peters 26th. The processes and checks which the hospital has adopted over the last year or so are now extremely effective and warrant the performance it now achieves.