Visit to West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Our chief executive Daniel Elkeles recently made a humbling and enlightening visit to West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust at their Watford Hospital site.
 
Daniel reflected:

"Their estate is among the worst I’ve seen in the NHS, sadly comparable to what I was once responsible for at St Helier Hospital. Yet despite this, they have driven major improvements in the quality of care, operational performance, and financial performance. At the same time, they have ambitious but affordable redevelopment plans and are already progressing enabling works to prepare the site. They’ve also fostered some of the most advanced and mature place-based working across the four districts they serve in West Hertfordshire. Their mission of providing ‘excellent patient care together’ and their core value of empowerment truly resonates.

Their mantra is clear: if you can deliver high-quality emergency care, you can deliver both planned care and financial targets. On ED performance, they have gone from treating around 60% of patients within four hours to now consistently achieving 85% - all while closing almost all of their surge bed capacity. To achieve this, they:

🔵 Aim for operational excellence – with a system control centre focused on flow through their hospitals and understanding demand and activity data.
🔵 Focus on culture – eliminating corridor care by continually asking staff: ‘Would you like your mother cared to be for in a corridor?’.
🔵 Reduce length of stay – with a virtual ward, delivered in partnership with Central London Community Healthcare, providing step-up and step-down care for over 100 patients a day.
🔵 Huge investment in place-based working – including a pioneering social finance scheme with Macmillan launching later this month, which has the potential to be a game-changing intervention in neighbourhood health.
 
"They are also strong performers on cancer and planned care targets, and have significantly reduced their deficit funding. It was fantastic to hear about the building of a new planned care surgical centre at St Albans Hospital, and about their exciting collaboration with Hemel Hempstead Council to co-design health services that will contribute to revitalising the town centre.
 
"A huge thank you to Matthew, Toby, and Daniella for such an energising visit. I hope the enabling works for your new hospital at Watford can start soon - and that you get the all-important decision on when you can start building!"