Cancer and haematology clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Implementation of standardised and robust processes – We will minimise the risk of any patient being lost to follow-up.
- Ensuring an effective and robust systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) service – We are focussed on developing a skilled workforce, raising awareness and education around SACT (Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy Treatments).
- Faster treatment times for patients requiring chemotherapy and radiotherapy – We will reduce our waiting times for our cancer patients.
- Support the Northern Cancer Alliance in shaping and concluding non-surgical oncology (NSO) service re-design across the region.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026:
- Develop a new ambulatory care unit (July 2025).
- Develop further opportunities to provide services as daycases.
- Development of acute oncology (cancer) service.
- Continue to work towards delivering a ‘perfect pathway’ for cancer patients and to engage with other clinical boards to streamline patient experience.
- Delivery of a robust capacity and demand model for radiotherapy, chemotherapy and our estate.
- Installation of a new linear accelerator (LINAC) machine into the radiotherapy department.
- Development of a full LINAC replacement programme to ensure excellent patient quality and efficiency.
Cardiothoracic services clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- To create a supportive and positive culture – We know that having happy, fulfilled staff leads to better patient care. We are working on improving communication, leadership and staff wellbeing.
- Securing the future of cardiothoracic transplant services – Newcastle has a proud history of transplant care. We are working to keep our services strong and innovative.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026:
- Communication and engagement – Co-create and deliver a comprehensive communications and engagement plan, including input from patients and other stakeholders.
- Digital – Successfully implement an electronic patient referral system to streamline access and care co-ordination.
- Estates – Produce a detailed future estates plan, optimising the current bed base
- and infrastructure.
- Workforce – Outline robust workforce plans for key departments to address capacity and capability gaps.
- Quality improvement – Deliver successful QI initiatives across all departments and services.
- Performance – Achieve better alignment between demand and capacity across all areas of care delivery.
- Service development – Have a leading role and contribution in the development of the trust’s strategy for transplantation.
Clinical and diagnostic services clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Investing in services to support patients needing therapeutic interventions – We will reduce delays in our podiatry and amputation pathway by investing in therapy staff to ensure patients, who require prosthetics, are seen quicker.
- Improving staff working environment – We are looking at ways to address the current laboratory working environment within the blood sciences and equipment service at the RVI.
- Addressing diagnostic waiting times and activity – We will improve diagnostic waiting times and activity, through staff investment, to reduce our reliance on the independent sector and, ultimately, move to 7-day working.
- Making the best use of technology – To support our day-to-day operations – and wider collaboration across The Great North Healthcare Alliance – we will explore the best options for a new laboratory integrated management system.
- Driving innovation in advanced therapies – We are exploring medium to long-term options to re-locate the trust’s bone marrow transplant advanced therapies service into a more modern environment.
- Review of medicines management – We will continually review how we procure, prescribe, dispense, administer and monitor medications, with the overarching aim of improving patient outcomes and making the best use of our resources.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026:
- Digital plan – to expand the use of digital solutions to support care provision.
- We are working to develop a therapies strategy and will look to deliver phase 1.
- Further integrate outpatient booking into the Appointments Booking Centre and continue to develop a consistent outpatient strategy.
- Develop a sustainable workforce strategy in relation to posts that have previously been funded on a time limited basis.
- We will develop a plan for advanced therapies provision.
- Deliver increased production at the pharmacy production unit (PPU).
- We will reduce our reliance on the independent sector in radiology.
- Medical thrombectomy – Gain agreement form NHSE regarding funding and implement model.
Medicine and emergency care clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Improving patient experience in the emergency department – We will work hard to address the issues associated with high volumes of patients and long waiting times including overcrowding, waiting room safety and corridor care. We will also focus on reducing delays for patients awaiting a mental health need assessment.
- Tackling violence and aggression – We will put measures in place to help keep our staff safe – whether that’s when working on the wards or having difficult conversations over the phone.
- Delivering best models of care for our local populations – We are looking at the best way to sustain acute stroke services covering Newcastle and Gateshead.
- Community nursing – Move to neighbourhood model for unplanned care teams and strengthen collaboration with primary care and local authority to support discharge pathways and rehabilitation
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Realign operational management to clinical director portfolios/directorates. Pilot new matron structure that aligns also with clinical directors.
- Deliver a new Urgent Treatment Centre for the city, delivering improved patient experience and realign relevant clinical pathways in the Emergency Department and Same Day Emergency Care service.
- Embed and expand our frailty model and strategy with partners and consider a future intermediate care model.
- Develop an engagement strategy for community services to ensure positive engagement with primary care on priority areas.
- Embed expected date of discharge (EDD)/ criteria led day case and confirm clear plans for specific services including ward 44, intestinal failure, ward 16.
- Complete the relocation of the diabetes service, falls and syncope service and Belsay Unit to the Freeman Hospital.
- Maximise the use of clinical resources and space in dermatology.
Community services
Within community services, which is part of the medicine and emergency care clinical board, our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Optimise pathways in the community directorate by reorganising services to deliver proactive and preventative integrated care within localities.
- Work closely with partner organisations including the North East Ambulance Service, local authority and primary care to develop and deliver Newcastle’s frailty strategy and to agree and work towards an integrated intermediate care model.
- Develop an estates strategy to continue the development of community hubs allowing space to enhance collaborative working.
- Digital plan – to expand the use of digital solutions to support care provision.
- Continue to take action to keep staff safe by ensuring compliance of lone working device usage, and safety processes.
Family health clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Paediatric care – providing more high dependency care in the right place, with the right people looking after our patients.
- Workforce planning – making sure we have enough people with the right skills, and provide opportunities for our staff to develop and thrive, with a workforce that meets the needs of our diverse patient groups and population.
- Nurse / midwifery staffing – Complete staffing review and enact findings to make sure we have the right number of staff, with the right skills, in the right place.
- Obstetrics – Ensure the perinatal services manage acute physical deterioration through the ‘prevention, identification, escalation, response’ (PIER) approach, while achieving eObservation targets.
- Paediatrics – Paediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS) and Martha’s Rule – ensuring babies, children and young people are safely cared for with monitoring in place, with escalation of concerns from professionals and families are responded to in a timely and safe way.
- Triage performance – making sure when our patients present to our services there is a timely and robust triage and that they subsequently move into the right pathway in a seamless and timely way.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Developing a perinatal strategy to build upon the foundations set out in the 3-year plan for maternity and neonatal services.
- Complete the redesign and decant of neonatal and postnatal services to improve the perinatal estate environment, reduce the infection control risks and enhance patient experience.
- Expansion of the robotic programme to increase daycase care for complex surgery in gynaecology.
- Launch a refreshed model for private fertility treatment to increase competitiveness and income of the Centre for Life Model.
In relation to The Great North Children’s Hospital we will:
- Develop the vision and strategy for The Great North Children’s Hospital to be recognised as a leading children’s hospital, delivering exceptional, responsive care to babies, children, young people and their families.
- We will have recruitment and retention programmes across nursing, medical and admin, developing nursing/admin roles. We will make sure staff are managed by the right people, in the right place.
- We will focus on the recruitment and establishment of a fully integrated critical care service i.e. PICU, designated HDU, critical care outreach team (Martha’s Rule) and transport service.
Surgical and specialist services clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Ophthalmology – We will introduce a robust appointment system in the macula and glaucoma services to prevent patients being lost to follow-up, improve urgent response times in the medical retina service and reducing outpatient waiting time backlog.
- Reducing, recognising and responding to intra-operative events – We plan to develop a system for reporting known complications and presenting the relevant data to the surgical specialities. Currently we do not have a robust system for collecting data on these events without the expectation of a lengthy review.
- Managing violence and aggression – To help protect our staff and patients, we will develop a board-wide framework for managing violence and / or aggressive incidents.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Oral and maxillofacial surgery – We will support the region to maintain and develop hub and spoke model including support and outreach to Carlisle.
- Dental – We will continue to maximise opportunities in dental primary care including working with commissioners to develop city / North model for primary dental care.
- Ophthalmology – We will continue to improve patient tracking and safety improvements to ensure patients are not ‘lost to follow up’ and avoid wrong lens surgery.
- Work to develop and establish a Neurosciences Institute.
Perioperative and critical care clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Making the best use of our data to inform and support clinical practice and business decisions, as well as helping us to achieve compliance with national data submissions and learn from national reviews.
- Safety is paramount for our patients – We will ensure we have robust processes in place for reporting incidents and complaints – and that we share our learning and feedback with patients and staff.
- People – Access to learning, training and development for our staff and focussing on improvements in culture in specific areas.
- We will make the best use of our operating theatres.
- Safeguarding our standards of care – We will enhance our local governance processes and structures within the clinical board to provide assurance of patient safety and quality of care.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Data and digital – Developing information on outcomes of the care and treatment we are delivering using digital solutions and benchmarking against outcomes, productivity and efficiency measures.
- Estates – Upgrade of our environment: theatres, theatre recovery, post anaesthesia care unit, critical care, sterile services and pre-assessment clinic.
Surgical and associated services clinical board
Our other quality and safety priorities for 2025/2026 are:
- Developing a Freeman interstitial lung disease failure (IF) unit – Our aim is to provide safe, effective and timely care to the increasing size and complexity of our intestinal failure patient population, so we deliver the right care in the right place.
- Developing a Freeman multi-speciality ambulatory care unit – We are providing a dedicated space for patients to receive urgent outpatient care and in doing so reducing length of hospital stay, admissions to hospital and relieving pressure on some of our emergency services.
- Minimise the risk of any patient being lost to follow-up – We recognise our patient pathways are often complex, so we want to work with teams to ensure robust processes are in place, so patients receive ongoing care when required.
Our other key deliverables for 2025/2026 are:
- Finance – Continue to develop non-NHS income through private and international services.
- Develop and expand nurse-practitioner workforce in Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic services (HPB).
- Review of non-medical workforce in urology to enable delivery of the regional alliance service.
- Start work towards creating a sustainable model for hepatobiliary consultant workforce to deliver elective hand emergency services.
- Expansion of the robotic surgical programme at the RVI
- Improve access to audiology services for Northumberland patients
- Complete and embed service and structural change in audiology
- Review of emergency theatre provision on the Freeman Hospital site to manage demand.
- Develop urology alliance work to create closer working with Northumbria and a prime provider model for Gateshead.
