East Kent Hospitals is focussed on improving waiting times for patients, following the widespread improvements it has made to the quality of patient care.
The CQC reported significant improvements over the last two years, which resulted in the Trust coming out of quality special measures in February this year.
East Kent Hospitals Interim Chief Executive, Susan Acott, said: “Quality of care is very important to us. Staff work hard to give patients high standards of compassionate care, and 96% of inpatients would recommend the Trust as a place to be treated.
“We are continuing to work hard to improve waiting time standards for patients across all our services, this is a priority for the Trust as these are much longer than we would like.
“We have a 12-month plan to improve waiting times in emergency care, including providing clear information to the public about how they can use alternatives such as minor injury units for faster care, when it’s not an emergency, and how to stay well through winter by having the flu vaccine and getting early advice from your GP and pharmacy.
“Demand for our services has continued to grow which is why we have been clear that we need long-term change to the way healthcare in east Kent is provided if we are to consistently provide the standard of services we want for patients.
“This means providing more local care in the community and people’s own homes so that people only have to come into hospital when they need to, and improving how we use each of our three acute hospitals to provide faster access, better care and outcomes for patients because we can give them the specialist care they need from a single expert team, instead of stretching every specialist service across several sites.
“The NHS in East Kent is working with the public and developing options for which sites should provide which services. This will be consulted on as part of a public consultation led by the Clinical Commissioning Groups in East Kent, we hope that will be in Spring next year.”
The Trust has a strong safety record, is in the best performing 25% of Trusts for hospital standardised mortality and has some of the best outcomes for patients in the country for example in trauma care and urology.
East Kent Hospitals is one of the CHKS Top 40 Hospitals for 2017. The award is based on over 20 key performance indicators covering safety, clinical effectiveness, health outcomes, efficiency, patient experience and quality of care.
