Development of the clinical strategy
The joint trust medical directors and the director – Great North Health Care Alliance and strategy, are leading the development of the trust’s clinical strategy through a steering group and clinically led supporting workstreams.
This work supports, and will build on, the development of medium-term plans across the trust. The clinical strategy work includes a focus on how best to deliver the three ‘shifts’ that frames much of the new Government’s important policy in relation to the NHS:
- From analogue to digital
- From treatment to prevention
- From hospital to community
The clinical strategy steering group has reviewed the interdependencies of clinical specialties at the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Freeman Hospital to identify opportunities to improve quality, safety and patient and staff experience through how and where services are organised.
Working with clinical boards, staff and stakeholders, this work will help ensure that services are in the right place, unnecessary duplication is minimised, and that unplanned and planned care can both be delivered efficiently and effectively.
This work will then shape the organisation’s estate strategy in relation to any future new buildings and refurbishments.
Community services
There will be a significant focus on our community services including:
- Working with partners we will develop and deliver Newcastle’s frailty strategy and agree and work towards an integrated intermediate care model.
- The appointment of a GP clinical lead and director of community services.
- With local partners we will develop a neighbourhood integrated teams plan.
The People Plan
In 2024, we launched our People Plan which outlines our priorities and actions to create a stronger and improved work environment across all our teams and sites.
The voice and insight of our staff is the foundation of our People Plan with over 8,000 staff sharing their experiences with us. The plan is guiding our journey to make Newcastle Hospitals a place where everyone feels welcome, supported and valued.
We have delivered several milestones and outputs for the first year of the people plan including:
- Comprehensive review of trust policies, management approach, mediation capability and formal processes to create a more compassionate and people centred approach.
- Compassionate leadership programme successfully piloted across several cohorts with excellent evaluations and prepared for trust-wide delivery.
- The production of the trust’s ‘behaviour & civility charter’, co-produced with staff, supported by the delivery of awareness sessions to over 14,000 staff.
- Establishing a framework for positive behaviour for all staff, and integrated into trust recruitment, induction and training.
- Introduced value based recruitment to ensure appointments are made with a focus on behaviours, especially for leadership posts.
- Redesign and pilot a new appraisal process across a number of clinical boards to improve the value and impact of a person-centred annual review.
In year 2 of the People Plan we plan to
Develop our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion approach
Our big signals commit us to making Newcastle Hospitals a great place to work where everyone feels supported, respected and able to be their best.
We know from our staff survey and other data that those with different protected characteristics have a less positive experience at work across a range of areas and we have made a commitment to changing this.
- This year we will make progress on the 6 NHS high impact actions for NHS organisations.
- We will also co-produce an improvement plan to tackle discrimination and promote fairness in our services, and focus on the steps we need to take to become an anti-racist organisation.
Behaviour and civility charter
We are working hard to make Newcastle Hospitals a kind and compassionate place to work.
Staff told us that they sometimes they experience rudeness, incivility and poor behaviour from colleagues. We developed a behaviour and civility charter in response.
This sets out our shared commitment to developing a supportive and respectful working environment and the expectations we have for everyone who works here.
In 2024, we started work to embed its principles into our practices, policies and procedures, such as recruitment, induction, appraisal, training and celebration.
Sustainable Healthcare in Newcastle (Shine)
Newcastle Hospitals was the first healthcare organisation in the world to declare a climate emergency in 2019.
In line with this strong position of leadership we developed our Climate Emergency Strategy committing to science based Net Zero targets ahead of the wider system.
Our three goals are:
By 2040 we will produce no waste. We will manage resources within the circular economy, with items surplus to requirements becoming a resource in another part of the system.
Zero carbon care
By 2030 the emissions we control will be net zero – our ‘Newcastle Hospitals Carbon Footprint’
By 2040 the emissions we can influence will be net zero – our ‘Newcastle Hospitals carbon footprint plus’
Clean air
By 2030 our operational transport activities generate no harmful air pollution.
By 2040 our healthcare facilities are accessed by only zero emission travel.
Zero waste
By 2030 we will reuse and repair everything that can be reused and repaired.
We are not on target to reach Net Zero 2030 due to limited funding available for decarbonisation solutions. Achieving our goals requires this agenda to be embedded into everything we do at Newcastle Hospitals.
We also need to adapt to climate change, as extreme weather events such as flooding and heat waves increase and demonstrably impact our patients, staff, visitors, hospitals estates and supply chain.
We will be working with colleagues across the Trust to embed sustainability into the new Trust strategy that follows on from this interim strategy, to ensure that our hospitals can continue to meet the needs of our service users in a changing climate and mitigate our contribution to global warming.
Our Accrediting Excellence (ACE) programme
At the end of 2024 we launched our Accrediting Excellence programme – a 6-step comprehensive assessment of a ward / department and the quality of care delivered within it. It drives continuous improvement in patient outcomes and increases patient satisfaction and staff experience.
What does an accredited area look like?
- Evidence of shared learning and ‘ward to board’ assurance.
- Building relationships outside of immediate area.
- Effective clinical leadership.
- Authentic multidisciplinary responsibility for the patient and care delivery .
- Clear vision and set of standards owned by the team.
- Patient-centred.
- Empowered staff.
The key components of the programme are:
- Improving quality and reducing avoidable patient harm.
- Patient experience.
- Leadership and staff experience.
- Engagement for improvement.
- Increasing research opportunities.
Patient and staff experience programme
Our aspiration is to develop a culture in which our patients experience is embedded in what we all do, think, plan and deliver.
Alongside this, our people are central to improving the quality and delivery of safe and compassionate care. How they experience the culture of the organisation and how they feel about their workplace directly impacts on their ability to care for patients, their team, themselves, and their families.
We know that patients have a positive experience when there is a culture of safety that puts them first, and gives their experience the highest priority.
Our ambition is to develop a patient and staff experience programme that is the most comprehensive in the NHS. We will capture performance at a site, clinical board, team and ward level.
Information about real-time patient experience will be displayed on all wards and clinic areas.
Priorities for year 1
- Emergency care – Real time patient experience monitoring with improved experience of waiting for care.
- Maternity – Improved community engagement.
- Roll-out of real time measurement on 40 wards.
- Better understanding of – and improvement to – the experience of bereaved relatives.
- Capturing the patient experience of those waiting for elective care elective care (orthopaedics).
- Working with Newcastle Carers to understand the carer experience of an inpatient stay.
- Secure HIV Confident accreditation for our services.
Research, Innovation, Commercial
Our vision is to provide an investment platform, generating income to reinvest into patient care by focussing on:
- Private and international healthcare
- Health and life sciences
- Pharmacy production
- Education and training
- Data partnerships
What will this mean for the trust?
All initiatives highlighted in the commercial strategy are enabled through working closely with our stakeholders.
We want everyone to feel a part of our ambition to increase commercial income and to enhance our services and the health, wealth, and wellbeing of the Newcastle population and beyond.
We will continue to develop and grow commercially to realise our potential as a commercial leader within our healthcare system.
The trust will have a diverse income stream from a mixed portfolio of commercial schemes.
Clinical research
We want everyone to share our ambition to deliver world-class research that not only advances science but strengthens our services locally, regionally and nationally.
The trust’s clinical research strategy, launched in September 2021, outlines how we are working towards this with 25 ambitious goals and 10 key performance indicators.
We believe that clinical excellence and research excellence existing together, each other.
We want
- Research integrated into routine patient care, so all staff understand its importance and relevance.
- Every patient to have the opportunity to participate in research and recognise the associated benefits.
- A research infrastructure that is agile, fit-for-purpose and affordable.
- To make research fun and fulfilling through mentorship, incentivisation and time.
- To build on our partnership with Newcastle University.
- To provide support for innovation.
Health inequalities
We are committed to reducing health inequalities for the population that we serve, as well as our workforce.
Because of our geography, population profile, history and economic situation in the North East, we know that many patients and colleagues will experience health inequalities, leading to them having less healthy years of life. There is action we can take to improve this.
Priorities and objectives
Our work aims to continue reducing health inequalities and promoting equitable health outcomes by engaging with clinical boards over the next five years to focus on six priority areas.
These 6 priorities are
- Prevention – tackling the preventable causes of poor health, especially smoking and obesity. Prevention also includes vaccination and falls prevention, screening tests (including blood borne viruses) and rehabilitation.
- Maternity – ensuring that pregnant women and babies have the best prenatal and anti-natal care and that babies have a good start in life.
- Children and young people
- Elective care
- Urgent and emergency care
- Research and innovation
Great North Healthcare Alliance
Working together to deliver excellence in healthcare.
The Great North Healthcare Alliance was formed in 2024 and together with our neighbouring trusts – Northumbria, Gateshead and North Cumbria – we are committed to working more closely together.
Our aim is to improve patient experience and tackle the challenges which the NHS faces.
By working together we will:
- Improve patient outcomes and reduce inequalities by strengthening our services and making it easier to access the best clinical care.
- Create great places to work by joining up our recruitment and staff experience offer and by sharing career development opportunities.
- Pioneer innovation, transformation, research and development, making the most of our academic and commercial opportunities.
- Reduce health inequalities and do more for our economy, environment and communities through local and national partnerships.
- Create a financially sustainable value for money health economy that raises revenue by treating as many patients as possible within the resources available, commercial activity and cost reduction.
