About Us
Trust performance
The Newcastle Hospitals is a large, technically complex and diverse organisation. To make sure we consistently meet all the national performance targets set by the Care Quality Commission (England's healthcare watchdog), whilst delivering a high quality and safe service to all who come here, we need tight monitoring systems to make sure we stay on track.
With a strong focus on ensuring we achieve our aims and objectives, we have a well established, robust performance management review process in place. Working closely with our clinical and support services we can internally review our performance on quality and business and financial issues. This helps us closely monitor everything we do, throughout the year.
So, how do we know we do well?
All NHS bodies are subject to a number of external reviews to assess our performance and the outcomes are made available to the public and other healthcare organisations. These include the following:
CQC Core Standards Declarations
Annual Health Check 2008/09Show [+]Hide [-]
We have a proven track record in meeting quality targets, national standards and financial obligations, and our achievements can be demonstrated by the results shown in the Care Quality Commission's Annual Health Check. This is the national assessment system against which the performance of all healthcare organisations in England and Wales is rated annually.
The Care Quality Commission set high thresholds to achieve excellence and during 2008/09 the Newcastle Hospitals performed exceedingly well:
| Quality of Services | Excellent |
| Use of Resources | Excellent |
This rating assesses the quality of services we provide by considering standards and targets performance. A full breakdown of the targets is included within the rating on the Care Quality Commission website.
The Trust maintained the double ‘Excellent’ rating.
The Trust has also been featured in the ‘Name and Fame’ list as one of the 43 trusts that have performed strongly for two years
And in the Overview document has been mentioned as being one of the top performers - Of the 37 trusts to score double excellent in 2007/08, only 13 do so for the second consecutive year.
Service Reviews 2008/09Show [+]Hide [-]
The Care Quality Commission and the Audit Commission (through The Acute Hospital Portfolio) carry out a range of service reviews. Each organisation participating in the reviews was given a score for each indicator, between 1 and 5 (scale may vary for particular indicators). These scores were then used to determine our overall score.
To date we have achieved the following results:
| Children's Follow up (08/09 Published March 09) | Information |
| Maternity Services (January 2008) | Best Performing |
| Services for Children in Hospital 2005/06 (October 2006) | Good |
| Management of Admissions 2005/06 (October 2006) | Good |
| Diagnostic Services 2005/06 (October 2006) | Good |
| Management of Medicines 2005/06 (October 2006) | Fair |
See the Care Quality Commission website for more information on how we performed.
Patient and staff surveys 2008/09Show [+]Hide [-]
Annual surveys are carried out involving both our patients and our staff to help us better understand where we are seen to be doing well and where we should be focusing our efforts to improve the experience for both patients and staff.
Patient Survey
The Care Quality Commission's annual NHS Patient Survey Programme is sent out to a number of inpatients to seek their views on how we perform in a range of specific areas.
Overall, the findings of the latest inpatient survey for 2008/09 determined that our patients found the care and treatment provided in our hospitals was 'satisfactory' and we were amongst the top 20% performing Trusts in England. However the results of this survey enables us to review those areas where there is room for improvement and make positive changes for our patients and their carers.
Visit the Care Quality Commission website to find out more about what they had to say.
Staff Survey
The annual staff survey is sent out to a randomly selected group of staff covering a range of key areas:
- Work/life balance
- Appraisal, training, learning and development
- Team working, supervision, communication and staff involvement
- Safety at work
- Staff attitudes
The latest staff survey carried out in 2006 showed that there had been some noticeable improvements from previous years, although there are some areas which would benefit from further improvement, in particular around team working, flexible working and reporting of errors, near misses and incidents.
The results enable us to recognise the commitment of our staff by developing and rewarding them appropriately, and focusing on making changes that our staff really want, helping them to continue to deliver the best quality service for our patients.
