You matter, we care
Welcome to our Corporate Strategy for 2020 to 2025. We have refreshed our previous strategy to acknowledge the journey that we are on as a leading NHS Foundation Trust and provider of acute and community services, and to ensure we are concentrating on the things that matter most to our patients. Like many other trusts, we’ve faced up to new challenges and pressures without compromising on the quality delivery of our services, and this strategy helps set the future direction for our trust.
Foreword
Joint Chair
In an ever evolving landscape both within the NHS and the wider picture, this Trust, like so many others, faces new challenges on a regular basis. As an organisation we have a responsibility to reflect change in the services we provide to ensure we maintain our focus on quality and safety in care.
We work to support around 400,000 people across Stockton, Hartlepool and County Durham, and we recognise our obligations in ensuring that access to the right health care services, at the right time, in the right place is of paramount importance.
We continue to work in close partnership with our colleagues across our immediate region, with ambitions of an Integrated Care Partnership which we hope will support the eradication of health inequalities for the communities we work within.
By working together, we can ensure that the populations of Teesside and the surrounding areas have access to leading health care provision. Further afield we remain dedicated to the value of an Integrated Care System to ensure sustainability for both the NHS and health care across the North East and Cumbria.
Our Trust continues to review and evaluate our clinical services with a view to ensuring we are ‘fit-for-purpose’ in being a part of a robust wider network of health care providers.
Professor Derek Bell, OBE Joint Chair
Chief Executive
I am pleased to present our Corporate Strategy for 2020 to 2025 which gives an insight and overview of our strategic direction for the next part of our journey. We have started to build on the hard work of previous years, progressing the ambitions of the Trust in line with innovation, growth and, of course, sustainability.
I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to all of our staff for their commitment to making our organisation one that I am proud to lead. No matter the role or department within our Trust, our workforce is critical in contributing to delivering safe and effective care for our patients.
In January 2019 NHS England announced the Long Term Plan for our sector. It was pleasing to note that much of the aspiration and ambition within the document mirrored many of our own current practices.
However, the early part of 2020 has been a hugely difficult and challenging time for everyone, not just in health and care services but for all in society. The NHS has responded magnificently to the coronavirus pandemic and we will continue to do everything that we can to reduce infection as we move through the rest of the year and beyond.
We will continue to provide joined-up care at the right time, in the right place, with our ambition to prevent health inequalities across Tees Valley. We will do this by investing in our workforce and identifying the key areas of pressure, building upon digitally enabled care success to date, and sustaining financial viability so that we can start to realise our vision for the years to come.
Julie Gillon, Chief Executive Officer
About us and what we do
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust produced a five year Corporate Strategy in 2016 focusing on better care closer to home whilst enabling greater efficiencies, collaboration, innovation and new ways of working against a challenging financial backdrop.
The Trust has continued to meet the many challenges in order to deliver the changes and improvements to the way in which care is delivered to people of Stockton and Hartlepool.
We have constantly been recognised for our excellent performance nationally and we are now part of a national trial to further improve performance across urgent and emergency care. The Trust also implemented a high performing integrated urgent care service during this period at both of its hospitals.
In addition to this, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) delivered a ‘Good’ rating of the Trusts services in 2018 following changes to some services which required improvement. This included improvements in efficiency and productivity, ensuring all services are of high quality and clinically safe.
Financially, although there is still work to do, the Trust is in a much improved position in comparison to previous years and this is testament to the commitment of all of our staff who have helped to make savings where it has been possible without compromising the quality of care we provide.
Local Context
- 369 million annual turnover
- 400,000 + population
- 5,300 staff delivering safe and high quality services
- Two main Hospitals and a Community Hospital
- Three Local Authorities
- Three Care Groups – Healthy Lives, Responsive Care and Collaborative Care
Beyond the Five Year Forward View
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out ambitions for a future proofed NHS with a clear focus on a digital first approach that empowers patients to get on board with this journey.
It also sets a challenge to explore opportunities for closer working with partner organisations and to put measures in place to achieve a more robust workforce model and many of the measures are already being developed, explored and implemented here at our Trust.
Our cancer care targets have improved through linking our research and screening teams to develop earlier detection and better treatment to improve patient outcomes.
We are helping patients get home safer, sooner by giving them the appropriate tools for self-care as well as training community care providers to monitor patients in the home setting and we have been accelerating our focus on population health management. This means less hospital admissions, easing the pressure on our core services.
Complimenting all of this, we are a Global Digital Exemplar Fast Follower using new technologies to digitise patient records, revolutionise the way we recruit, and ensure that staffing levels and patient flow are more efficient than ever before.
We are a medium size Trust with huge ambitions and the Long Term Plan lays the foundations for even further innovation.
Integrating our Services
- Commissioning
- Contracting
- Performance Management
- Acute hospital services reconfiguration and improvement
Tees Valley Integrated Partnership
- Four ICPs in the ICS
- High level involvement of NHSE/I to support development
- Regional specialist work streams
- Focus on patient pathways providing best outcomes for communities
- Independent clinical expertise and oversight
Our Vision
We will provide the best healthcare for everyone within our population
We know that just doing what we’ve always done will not meet the needs of the population we serve.
We all need to better manage the health of the population so that in 20-30 years time our communities will be healthier, fitter and less reliant on hospital services in the future.
To achieve our vision, we will:
- Focus on groups in society
- Deliver interventions across an integrated health and care system
- Manage the health of our population better
- Demonstrate strong and effective collaboration, and trust
- Improve and integrate our services
- Deliver services that are clinical effective, quality and safe
- Promote innovation and inclusivity
- Maintain financial stability
Our Values
Collaborative
Using the expertise of many, to achieve our aims and objectives. Collaboration is a cornerstone of the Trust and is something we believe passionately about.
Our work with our stakeholders and strategic partners is critical to the continuous improvement of the healthcare sector as a whole, and is a big and important part in joining-up the health economy for the benefit of our population.
We maintain a firm and clear commitment to ensuring the integration of health and care services is the best that it can be.
Aspirational
Our staff are our ‘shining stars’ who provide the care that our patients rely on.
With an emphasis on safety and quality, many of our staff go much further than their daily duties and this is reflected in the feedback we receive from those who come into contact with the Trust.
We encourage all our staff to be aspirational in their line of work, and to be the best that they can be.
Respect
Respect is something we expect as a given in most situations, yet at times of ill health when our resistance is low, as patients, it can sometimes be the last thing on our mind.
We think it should be one of the first things patients notice – that we treat everyone with dignity and respect.
All of our staff maintain a respectful relationship with patients, their families, and their individual colleagues that care for them.
Empathy
We are committed to maintaining a culture that embraces compassion and the delivery of care that everyone can be proud of.
Ensuring that we understand how the other person feels – whether that be a patient, a family relative, or a colleague.
Showing empathy is important to the relationships we build within the Trust, and also to those that we build outside of our hospitals.
Joining-up Our Strategies
As a progressive and forward thinking Foundation Trust we make sure that our strategic direction, and the decisions we take to inform our future direction, are based on sound, practical evidence not only from within the Trust but from other external sources such as strategic partners and clinical and non-clinical stakeholders.
That is why we focus on key areas such as improving our financial position, the people that work for us, the safety and quality of care, our estates and digital maturity and the research and development to help us make bigger and better improvements in our healthcare.
We have aligned our supporting strategies that have helped to influence and shape our direction.
- Clinical services strategy
- Estates
- Research and development
- Digital
- Workforce
- Quality improvement and safety
- Finance
‘Excellence’ as our standard
We will continue to focus on the key areas of our business to measure our success, whilst looking to the future and exploring how we can improve what we do, and how we operate as a successful NHS Foundation Trust
Areas to measure our success by:
- Staff satisfaction
- Patient Safety
- Patient satisfaction
- Technology and digital
- Health and social care integration
- Maximise our hospital and community environment
- Sustainable clinical services
- Governance and livence conditions
- Financial stability
- Health and wellbeing
- Research and development
Our Strategic Aims
Putting our population first
We create a culture of collaboration and engagement to enable all healthcare professionals to add value to the healthcare experience for the population we serve and demonstrate this through high standards of patient safety and quality of service. We will do this through the effective engagement of carers, families and friends, and relevant stakeholders to ensure all members of our population are central in our conversations.
Valuing people
We ensure that every member of our staff, our patients and their families, and indeed all members of our communities feel valued when either working in our hospitals, or experiencing our services within a community setting. From ‘Board to Neighbourhood Ward’, including all of our support services, our staff are what makes the organisation tick for the people who use it.
Health and wellbeing
We embrace the health and wellbeing of our population and ensure that their health needs are reflected and catered for in the provision of services from the Trust. We will do this by focusing interventions around our priorities under prevention of health inequalities and managing the health of the population within communities and neighbourhoods.
Transforming our services
We continually review, improve and grow our healthcare services whilst maintaining performance and compliance with required standards. This includes developing and embracing digital solutions, supporting the full integration of the Great North Care Record, and ensuring we address the ever-present financial challenges without compromising safety or quality.
Population Health
Population Health Management is about improving the physical and mental health
outcomes and the general health and wellbeing of an entire population, focusing on communities and neighbourhoods, and reducing health inequalities within a defined population.
Our work with both Public Health teams in Stockton and Hartlepool Councils has enabled us to draw comparisons with the priorities that we believe are appropriate within population health.
Our next challenge is to use this data to drill further into the conditions that affect parts of the population and we will ensure that all of our collaborative efforts are in line, and in step, with our colleagues in both Health and Wellbeing Boards within our locality.
However, we also know that the majority of the conditions that we see as our priorities can be prevented by stopping smoking, reducing alcohol intake, eating healthily and taking more physical activity, but the difficulties in persuading people to stop or reduce activities that have been in place for a number of decades (and longer) within society form part of a much bigger cultural transformation.
The Trust has made a firm commitment to the prevention agenda and the development of a population health focus as part of our secondary acute care, and this has been reinforced with the recruitment of key senior personnel from a public he alt h/heal th pro tec ti on and primary care background to help the Trust make swift progress in addressing longer term health inequalities.
This is very much an on-going process and we will work with our partners to provide a collective response to the population needs across our localities.
Building On Our Success
The collaboration towards building a successful integrated care partnership across South and North Tees and parts of Durham is developing, and we are confident that the system-wide integration of services within the Tees Valley Health & Care Partnership will deliver better, improved care for those who need it.
Collaboration has not just been an important aspect of integration planning. The Trust has made considerable strides to contribute to the broader public health agenda within our localities and our focus on population health management is an important strand.
In order to make further progress, the Trust will work with its partners and key stakeholders in primary care and public health to fully understand the health inequalities and poor health determinants to help target interventions to where they are needed most.
Our plans will also be influenced by the approach to working with our partners in primary care and the emerging primary care networks. We aim to contribute to reducing inequalities in a practical way within communities and neighbourhoods, whilst delivering our core business.
Our hospital wards, as well as being a place for treatment and recovery, are also ideally placed to provide information, advice and guidance to patients who have been admitted for treatment. We will ensure that every message we give is a public health message.
Strategy document PDF
Click the link below to view or download our corporate strategy 2022 to 2025 in PDF form:
Corporate Strategy 2020 to 2025 (3MB pdf)
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