2024 Annual Public Meeting minutes

Welcome

The Trust’s Chair, Charles Alexander, welcomed around 140 foundation trust members, staff, governors, partners, and members of the public to the Trust’s 2024 Annual Public Meeting. The meeting was being held in person and virtually to enable as many people to attend as possible.

The Chair noted that it remained a challenging time for the NHS, and that this had been clearly articulated in the report by Lord Darzi that had been published the previous week. However, there remained cause for optimism at the Trust, not least because its new strategy had set out a blueprint for how it could create a better future through the quality of its people, its partnerships, new technology and science and innovation. The Chair thanked the Trust's workforce for their dedication over the past twelve months, the Board of Directors for their leadership, and the Council of Governors for their continued work in representing the interests of patients, public, staff and the Trust's partners in how the Trust operated.

Review of the last year and our future plans

The Trust's Chief Executive, Professor Ian Abbs, provided an overview of the key developments during the past twelve months. The Trust had delivered many successes during this period, not least the successful go-live of the new Epic electronic health record system in October 2023. Many of these successes had been celebrated earlier in the year at the Trust awards ceremony, and meeting attendees were shown a short film which demonstrated the difference the staff make.

An overview was provided about the new Trust strategy, which was based on five key priority areas, and the new Trust values: caring, ambitious and inclusive. Both the strategy and values had been developed with the input of patients, staff, and partners, and the Chief Executive thanked all of those who contributed to this important work.

From an operational perspective, it had been another challenging year, dominated by high demand for the Trust's services and complex operational pressures, including the go-live of Epic, industrial action, and the Synnovis cyber-attack. The Trust did not underestimate the distress and anxiety that long waits and cancelled appointments place on patients and their families. During this time Trust staff had continued to work tirelessly to deliver safe, compassionate, high quality care to as many patients as possible. While there had been good progress in many areas, there was still more to do to deliver against all the national performance standards and ensure that patients are not waiting too long for their diagnosis and treatment.

The Trust had agreed a financial target to deliver a breakeven position for 2023/24 with NHS England, and the Chief Executive was pleased to report that the final position was a surplus of £1.9 million. However, the financial environment in which the Trust is operating continues to remain very challenging.

Alongside the go-live of Epic, the past twelve months were also notable for a number of important strategic developments. These included the Trust being named as the new future provider of the principal treatment centre for children with cancer in south London and south east England following an expert review and public consultation process led by NHS England. The Trust was now working closely with patients, families, staff and partners to plan the safe transfer of care from the existing service. The Evelina London Children's Hospital was also now part of a partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trusts with responsibility for delivering the NHS Children and Young People’s Gender Service in London.

As in previous years, the NHS Staff Survey showed that the majority of Trust staff reported a positive experience of working for the organisation; however, there were also a number of areas where more must be done to improve. The Trust recognised the need to take further action on equality, diversity and inclusion so that all staff, patients and visitors feel confident that the Trust is a welcoming and supportive organisation and that everyone is treated fairly. The Trust had launched anti-racism and LGBT+ inclusion statements, as part of a commitment and programme of work to challenge and eliminate all types of discrimination in the organisation.

The Chief Executive thanked all the patients, families and friends who donate to, and fundraise for, all the Trust's charities, including Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity, Evelina London Children’s Charity, Guy’s Cancer Charity and the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity.

Presentations

A series of presentations were provided about how the Trust’s hospital and community services continue to improve the care provided to patients. These were about:

• the Sickle cell service which provides lifelong, personal care to patients
• the latest updates about the ongoing work to improve the environmental sustainability of the Trust and reduce its carbon emissions
• the @Home service, which provides community-based acute care to patients across Lambeth and Southwark

Council of Governors' report

John Powell, the outgoing Lead Governor gave an overview about the work of the governors during the past twelve months. Key areas of focus had been oversight of the implementation of the Epic system and the related MyChart app, the issue of patients missing their appointments, and how the Trust was adapting to the new challenges following the Covid-19 pandemic. The governors had also reviewed and refreshed some of the key ways of working, streamlining their meeting structure and refining the terms of references of their working groups to ensure they were fulfilling their duties in the most efficient and effective way. The outgoing Lead Governor thanked the whole Council of Governors for their work and dedication as 'critical friend' to the Trust, and wished Katherine Hamer, his successor as Lead Governor, the best for the future.

Question and answers session

The Trust's Board of Directors had received a number of questions in advance of the meeting, and took more questions from the meeting attendees in the room and online which led to discussion about the following topics:

• the financial impact of the cyber-attack on Synnovis, the Trust's provider of pathology services
• the use of independent sector capacity to address the backlog of patients waiting for treatment
• the need to improve and modernise the Trust's estates infrastructure
• the extent to which the Trust shares its research and learning outcomes for sickle cell disease with under-developed countries
• working hours for nurses
• access for Trust patients to dentistry services
• the implications for staff of developments with provision of the Trust's dialysis services

Close

The Chairman thanked those attending in person and online, along with the speakers and presenters for their support, involvement and questions.