2022 Annual Public Meeting minutes

Welcome

The Trust’s Chairman, Sir Hugh Taylor, welcomed around 80 foundation trust members, members of staff, members of the public and governors to the Trust's 2022 Annual Public Meeting. The meeting was again being held virtually to allow as many people to attend as possible from across the areas the Trust covers, which had expanded significantly since the merger with Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals.

The Chairman reported that the past year had again been heavily impacted by the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and paid tribute to staff across the organisation for their efforts during what had been an incredibly challenging period. The Trust’s local partners, including its charities, were also thanked for everything they had done to support the Trust through the year.

This would be the Chairman’s last Annual Public Meeting before he stood down from the role in November 2022. He had been privileged to serve the organisation since 2011 and expressed pride in the Trust’s many achievements over the past 11 years. His successor would be Charles Alexander, currently Chair of the Board of Directors at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and who has had a long and distinguished career working at board level across a number of different sectors, and who would be warmly welcomed by all those at the Trust.

Review of the last year and our future plans

The Chief Executive, Dr Ian Abbs, reflected on the first full year of being a merged organisation and the good progress that had been made to bring together teams and services across the Trust’s sites to provide the best possible care to patients as well as working with local partners across two integrated health systems. It had been a difficult year for everyone across the NHS, but the Trust had responded well to the challenges it had faced. A short film was played that captured some of the highlights from the past 12 months.

In recent weeks the Trust had successfully managed the significant operational challenge that the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had posed to its central London locations, particularly at St Thomas’ Hospital. It had also dealt well with the peaks in the COVID-19 pandemic during the past year, particularly as a result of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant in December 2021 which had placed the Trust’s services under immense pressure. Once again, the Chief Executive expressed heartfelt condolences on behalf of all Trust staff to those who had lost family, friends or colleagues during this time.

The Trust’s IT systems at the Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London hospitals and community sites had failed during the summer as a result of the extreme heat. Clinical teams had worked hard to ensure the Trust was able to continue to safely care for those people requiring urgent and emergency care, although regrettably a significant number of planned procedures and appointments were cancelled. The Board have commissioned a number of internal and external independent reviews to look in detail at what happened and learn lessons to ensure

such an incident is not repeated. The Chief Executive again apologised to patients, their families, and staff for the impact the IT failure had on them. The Trust’s community services had also been affected by a separate national IT outage, following a cyber-attack, and this continued to cause serious problems with the system used to manage appointments and patient care.

Both the COVID-19 pandemic and the IT incident have had a significant impact on the Trust’s ability to treat as many patients as it would have liked. The priority for the rest of 2022/23 was to focus on the full recovery and restoration of services and to reduce the number of patients waiting for care or diagnosis. The Trust would also continue to work closely with its partner trusts in south east London to tackle waiting lists as a collective health system, ensuring equity of access for all patients.

Further updates were provided about the Trust’s financial position, where it had effectively achieved a break-even outturn in 2021/22, and about how the wellbeing and welfare of staff remains a priority for the Trust. As in previous years, the NHS Staff Survey showed that staff reported a positive experience of working for the Trust, and the results show there is much to be proud of at Guy's and St Thomas'. Staff were excited about the implementation of the new Epic electronic health record system that is due to launch in 2023 and would transform the way that the Trust works by replacing its historic IT systems and paper records, and which would enable patients to have easier access to their own records.

On behalf of everyone at the Trust, the Chief Executive thanked the Chair for everything he had done since joining the organisation in 2011. During this time the Trust had gone from strength to strength and grown significantly. The Trust would miss his expertise and leadership, and the Chief Executive was particularly grateful of the Chair’s support since he became Chief Executive in 2020. A warm welcome was extended to his successor, Charles Alexander.

Council of Governors' report

John Powell had been elected as Lead Governor earlier in the year and thanked his predecessor, Heather Byron, for her hard work and dedication to the Trust during her time as governor.

The Council of Governors had done an impressive job in remaining engaged with a broad range of issues that had presented themselves over the past year, particularly as the size and scope of the Trust’s services had continued to expand, and whilst continuing to meet virtually. The passion with which governors carried out their roles and responsibilities was clear, and examples were given about the practical positive impact that governors could have on the running of the Trust.

During 2022 the Council of Governors had successfully carried out one of its key functions, which was the appointment of a new Chair. Governors would look forward to welcoming Charles Alexander and, on behalf of the whole Council of Governors, tribute was paid to the current Chair for his stewardship of the Trust, and he was wished a happy and well-earned retirement from the role.

Moving forward, in the Lead Governor’s view there were three areas of particular importance that the Council of Governors should continue to hold the Trust Board to account for: improved patient communications, progress with ensuring equality and diversity, and performance and accountability.

Presentations

Meeting attendees were provided with three short presentations about how the Trust’s hospital and community services continue to improve the care that is provided to patients. These were:

• The opening of a world-leading diagnostic centre at the Royal Brompton Hospital in February 2022, which had helped to streamline the patient journey by co-locating services as well as introducing state-of-the-art technology to enable pioneering interventional treatment;
• The ongoing COVID-19 vaccine programme which, since December 2020, had delivered almost 1 million vaccines, and where the outreach workstream had helped ensure the most vulnerable people in south east London, including the homeless, refugees and sex workers, had access to the vaccine; and
• The continued success of the Trust’s apprenticeship programme, where the range of apprenticeships had increased and more people both internal and external to the Trust had been supported to develop their careers, demonstrating the Trust’s role as an ‘anchor institution’ within its local communities.

Question and answer session

The Trust Board of Directors received a number of questions from meeting attendees which led to discussion about:

• How the new Epic electronic health record system would help improve the timeliness with which clinical results are provided to patients and their GPs;
• The Trust’s assessment of the impact on the health of undocumented migrants of its statutory obligation to charge them for care, and how this would be aligned with King’s College Hospital;
• The scale of the Trust’s private patient debt and its plans to recover this sum;
• How the Trust was involved in the roll-out of the Monkeypox vaccine;
• The important work done by the Trust’s therapies team in both treating patients and supporting patient flow through the hospital, and the potential impact of winter planning on this team;
• The Trust’s commitment to improving and expanding the quality of services for children and young people, including progress with plans to expand the Evelina London Children’s Hospital; and
• The impact of cycle lanes outside St Thomas’ Hospital.

Close

The Chairman thanked those attending for their support and involvement