Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

The logo of Barking, Havering and Redridge Hospitals

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) is the organisation that runs NHS hospitals in east London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge Primary Care Trusts.

It operates two main hospitals: King George Hospital in Ilford, Redbridge and Queen's Hospital in Romford. It also operates many clinics at a number of sites in the nearby area including Barking Hospital and Brentwood Community Hospital.^[1]

The Trust serves around 700,000 people from a variety of backgrounds and across a wide area, making it one of the largest in the country.^[2]

It has a new Hyper Acute Stroke Unit, a regional centre for neurosurgery, one of the busiest cancer centres in London and a maternity service delivering almost 10,000 babies a year. The Trust has an extremely strong infection control record, and has slashed the number of MRSA and Clostridium difficile rates by more than 70% in recent years.

Performance

In October 2013 it was placed in the highest risk category by the Care Quality Commission.^[3] In December 2013 it was reported that the trust had paid out more than £23 million for negligence claims in maternity in five years.^[4] The CQC report said that while the trust was working hard to make improvements in many areas, it still provided "unsafe care" in A&E and "needs to urgently focus" on resolving these issues because "The A&E departments are at times unsafe because of the lack of full-time consultants and middle-grade doctors." It was placed in special measures on 18 December 2013.^[5]

In December 2013 it was placed in special measures by the Care Quality Commission. Inspectors returned to the Trust in March 2015 and highlighted areas of "outstanding care" and improvements in a number of areas, including leadership. The Trust remained in special measures with ongoing challenges around governance and performance. A further re-inspection is expected in early 2016.

In March 2014 The Trust was forecasting a deficit of £38 million for 2013-4 and a similar figure for 2014-5.^[6]

In September 2014 the trust revealed a huge, previously unreported waiting list of more than 90,000 patients, 61,143 of which had been waiting past the national 18 week limit.^[7] In February 2016 1,015 patients had been waiting more than a year for elective treatment - more than those waiting in the rest of England.^[8]

Its performance against the national 4-hour standard for emergency care improved dramatically during 2015-16. While the Trust had been among the worst performers in the country at one point, it is now one of the best in London. It hosted a conference in 2015, giving other struggling trusts an insight into the work which had taken place to turn performance around.

The trust was one of 26 responsible for half of the national growth in patients waiting more than four hours in accident and emergency over the 2014/5 winter.^[9]

The Trust was one of five to benefit from a five-year, £12.5m programme announced by Jeremy Hunt in July 2015 to bring in Virginia Mason Medical Center to assist English using their clinical engagement and culture tools including the Patient Safety Alert System and electronic dashboard. Hunt said: “The achievements at Virginia Mason over the past decade are truly inspirational and I’m delighted they will now help NHS staff to learn the lessons that made their hospital one of the safest in the world – patients will see real benefits as a result.” ^[10]

It is also one of eight new, national, vanguard sites which will help spearhead transformational change in urgent care across the country, and part of the development of a new Accountable Care Organisation for outer north east London.

In June 2015 Leigh Day & Co co-ordinated group litigation involving 17 separate families based on the trust’s alleged “failure to take reasonable care to ensure that there was a safe system of healthcare provided at [Queen’s Hospital]”. This included failure to provide sufficient numbers of suitably trained nursing staff and failure to supervise those staff and to ensure adequate records.^[11]

It spent 10.6% of its total turnover on agency staff in 2014/5.^[12]

Management

In the last few years there have been frequent changes to the hospital's Board members.

Management

• Chief Executive Matthew Hopkins joined BHRUT on 1 April 2014, following the retirement of previous Chief Executive Averil Dongworth. He was previously Chief Executive at Epsom andSt Helier Hospitals Trust^[13]
• Chair Dr Maureen Dalziel ^[14] stepped up as a Board Member to become Interim Chair after the previous Trust Chair Sir Peter Dixon resigned in March 2014.

See also

• Healthcare in London
• List of NHS trusts

References

External links

• BHR Hospitals - Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS homepage
• BHR Hospitals -Trust Members