Visit to South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust

Our chief executive Daniel Elkeles recently visited South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, where he was shown around by the trust's chief executive Ken Bremner and chair Allison Thompson.

Daniel said: "They are a great example of neighbouring trusts coming together and delivering outstanding levels of care to their communities in the six years since the organisations merged. In the last staff survey, they showed improvements across all the People Promise domains. They are routinely in the top five trusts for 18 weeks standard and haven't had any over 52-week waiters for several months, despite offering an array of specialist surgical services to the North East Region.

"They are also exceptionally proud of their achievements in the digital arena. The trust has achieved HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management Systems Society) level 7 accreditation - the highest performance level:

🔵 For clinicians this means they have single sign on right across the organisation and wherever they sign in they see their own homepage.
🔵 For patients it means they can be totally assured about the safety of the medications they have been prescribed. 

"They have recently introduced a new scheduling and tracking system for their community teams which enables them to be much more productive in planning their home visits, and are using the Luscii software for remote monitoring to keep more patients safely at home.

"They recognise there is much more to do to improve urgent and emergency care pathways across their patch. They are excited about the new eye hospital for the region opening next year right in the centre of Sunderland for which the local authority has provided the up-front capital funding, as part of its regeneration of the city centre.

"Thank you to Ken and Allison for such an informed visit."