Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the Shelford Group of University Teaching Hospitals and an NHS Foundation Trust. It provides acute medical services in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, at Royal Victoria Infirmary and Freeman Hospital, the Campus for Ageing and Vitality (the former Newcastle General Hospital site), Newcastle Dental Hospital, Newcastle Fertility Centre and the Northern Genetics Service.

The Private Finance Initiative scheme at the Trust is a 38-year deal with Healthcare Support (Newcastle) Ltd, a special purpose vehicle formed in 2005 involving the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Equion and Laing O'Rourke, Interserve and Innisfree Ltd.^[1] There is a dispute between the Trust and Laing O'Rourke over two clinical office buildings.^[2]

Performance

The Trust was highlighted by NHS England as having 4 (the most at any Trust) of the 148 reported never events in the period from April to September 2013.^[3]

The trust was rated outstanding by the Care Quality Commission in June 2016. It is fifth trust and first teaching hospital to be put in this category.^[4]

Services

In December 2013 it emerged that the Trust was interested in expanding into Primary Care. Freeman Clinics, a joint venture with local GPs, was set up in 2008. There are three practices with varying ownership models − in two of them, all the GPs are salaried, while in the other, the practice’s income is shared between the trust and GP partners.^[5]

The trust has one of the 11 Genomics Medicines Centres associated with Genomics England which will open across England in February 2014. All the data produced in the 100,000 Genomes project will be made available to drugs companies and researchers to help them create precision drugs for future generations.^[6]

It is one of the biggest provider of specialised services in England, which generated an income of £342.6 million in 2014/5.^[7]

The trust is to take over some services run by North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust in 2016. Children's services will be the first.^[8]

Staffing

In September 2015 it was reported that the trust was facing a staffing crisis because its plans to recruit more Filipino nurses were frustrated by the points-based immigration system. 85 applications for tier 2 certificates of sponsorship were rejected between June and September 2015. The NHS Employers Organisation wrote on behalf of the Trust, and nine others similarly placed, to the Home Secretary, Theresa May complaining that about 1000 applications had been rejected in six months, and anticipating that a further thousand would also be rejected. The Home Office responded by saying that over 1,400 tier 2 certificates of sponsorship had been issued to nurses since April 2015, but 600 had been 'returned unused.' Nurses were removed from the Shortage Occupation List on 6 April 2015, and the pay of most nurses is not sufficient to gain priority under the points based system.^[9]

It was named by the Health Service Journal as one of the top hundred NHS trusts to work for in 2015. At that time it had 11,847 full time equivalent staff and a sickness absence rate of 3.95%. 85% of staff recommend it as a place for treatment and 69% recommended it as a place to work.^[10]

See also

• List of NHS trusts

References