We’re expecting the verdict on our future as one of only eight Elective Surgery Hubs in the UK very soon now.

Professor Tim Briggs – creator of Getting It Right First Time - and the national panel meets tomorrow and we should hear back within a week or two.

Prof Briggs came to CHFT last month to hear about how we have tackled the waiting list backlogs resulting from Covid through an all-round massive team effort by all teams. Prof Briggs hailed the efforts as “phenomenal”.

The CHFT figures speak for themselves.

In April last year we had 509 patients waiting for more than 78 weeks. That is now down to just 28.

In April 2022 we had more than 2,500 patients who had been waiting for more than a year. After all the hard work and focus at the start of this month that number is down to 410 patients.  We also had a further 25,000 at risk of having to wait for more than a year and again that number is down to 483.  

Surgery’s Director of Operations, Thomas Strickland, said: “These amazing achievements are thanks to the joint efforts of a number of CHFT teams, including schedulers, medical secretaries, validators, operational managers, general managers and of course pre-op assessment and all on the clinical frontline.”

It's all go for the division as last week surgical and critical care colleagues presented to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as part of our regular series of informal CQC engagement visits.

They covered all areas of the service including SDEC, SAU, theatres and ICU, the team talked passionately about the care for patients and for each other. This was followed by a visit to all of the areas.

CQC colleagues were impressed by the innovation and compassion that clearly came through from everyone involved and informal feedback on the day included:

• “Staff clearly work together as teams”
• “The new ICU was 100% improved and had a really nice feel and was bright and spacious”
• “From experience SAUs are usually crowded and busy but the HRI SAU was not overcrowded and was a calm well manged environment”
• “SDEC is a well established embedded department which is clearly well led”

Senior CQC & Compliance Manager, Shelley Rochford, said: “The surgical team demonstrated true One Culture of Care by proudly showcasing their achievements as a division and individual teams.

"All colleagues showed true passion and commitment in their role and how they deliver compassionate care to patients every day. CQC were clearly impressed by how teams work together, “grow their own” by developing staff and have staff and patient wellbeing at the heart of what they do.”

The photos featured were taken at our recent Trust-wide work to update our image library. So expect to see more soon!