Saving more lives through faster treatment
Faster treatment, fewer missed appointments and more lives saved – that’s the prize we offer our patients if we achieve the goals set by our group of hospitals this year.
Hospital teams are finalising the details of how they will contribute to delivering our priorities for the forthcoming year, set out in our group plan for 2025/26.
Having seen and treated record numbers of patients over the last year, our Group plan, 2025-26[pdf] 3MB will be transforming our services and ways of working.
The key national requirements for 2025/26 are for the NHS to live within its means through enhanced efficiency, whilst improving elective wating times, meeting the A&E target for 78% to be seen within 4 hours, and maintaining quality and safety.
So, the theme of improving productivity underlines the priorities we have set under our strategic framework of patients, people and partnerships: providing excellent and equitable health and care, efficiently; being an outstanding, inclusive place to work; and working with local communities to improve health and wellbeing.
For example, achieving our goal of faster access to care would mean 30,000 more patients being seen within four hours in A&E, 5,000 fewer patients waiting more than 18 weeks for planned treatment, and improved cancer survival rates.
In addition we aim to reduce missed appointments in outpatients by 70,000, enable 7,000 more people to have day surgery so they don’t stay overnight in hospital, and operate on a further 3,000 more through better use of theatres.
Ann Hepworth, group director for strategy and partnerships, said: “These ambitious performance objectives are balanced by measures to further improve the quality of care, such as learning from patient safety incidents, improving communication with patients, and reducing the risk of complications in pregnancy.
“At the same time, we will continue to put the wellbeing and safety of our people at the centre of all we do, and take further steps to create a more inclusive and compassionate organisation.”
Developing the productivity theme, one of our partnership goals this year is to ensure that patients who are medically fit can leave hospital sooner. On average around 150 people residing in our hospital beds every day don’t need to be there. We will work with local partners to reduce this and free up resources.
The plan is underpinned by a firm financial commitment to balance the books by March 2026, making efficiency savings to offset rising costs and controlling the pay bill by reducing our reliance on temporary staff.
Despite the national funding constraints we anticipate being able to invest in critical infrastructure like the fire works at Newham hospital, urgent estate maintenance at Whipps Cross, and core schemes at St Bartholomew’s and The Royal London.