Local residents have their say at Annual Public Meeting
Epsom and St Helier hospitals held their Annual Public Meeting recently, giving local residents and staff the opportunity to discuss the recent launch of the Epsom and St Helier 2020-2030 engagement campaign, and to voice any questions or concerns that they had about our hospital’s future.
The meeting, which marked the publication of the Annual Report from 2016-17 (pictured above) and a presentation of the hospitals’ accounts, also gave people a chance to look back at an incredibly busy year for the Trust. Over the 12 months of 2016-17, staff at the hospitals saw a record-breaking 913,583 patients, welcomed 4,828 babies born in our care and spent a whopping £16.7 million on improving buildings, ICT systems and medical equipment. Despite the huge demand on services, the Trust exceeded all of the waiting time standards relating to cancer care and was one of the few trusts to see, treat or discharge more than 95% of A&E patients within a maximum of four hours.
Trust Chief Executive, Daniel Elkeles said “I am really pleased we had this opportunity to reflect on the past year and engage with our local community about the future of our hospitals. It’s our mission to provide great care to every patient, every day – both now and in the future. Thanks to the hard work and innovation of our staff, as well as strong working relationships with our health and social care partners, we have achieved a great deal and have a lot to be proud of. In recent years we have become much safer, improved the quality of our care, recruited hundreds more frontline clinical staff and stabilised our finances. But the fact is we are held back by our ageing buildings, many of which were designed before antibiotics were discovered. We want to continue improving, and we aspire to deliver great quality care despite the many challenges we all know that the NHS faces, both in the short and medium term”.
“I think it is vital that our hospitals prepare for the future now, and that is why we have started our Epsom and St Helier 2020-2030 engagement campaign. We want Epsom and St Helier to be ready for whatever the future may bring. That’s why we are asking for your help and support in making our case for an investment of between £300 and £400 million, to help keep our services local, and to build a new specialist acute facility.
“The more people who engage with us in this discussion, and make their voice heard, the better we can shape our new acute facility to fit the needs of the local community”.
For those of you who could not attend, please watch our video of the full meeting:
You can also find our slides from the day here.
You can download a copy of the Annual Report here, or you can request a copy from the Communications Team (simply email esth.communications@nhs.net).
For more information about our 2020-2030 campaign, please visit these pages, or email: esth2020-2030@nhs.uk.
