The trust’s key strategic priorities are underpinned by its core strengths and these are summarised in its vision:
We will be an agile and flexible organisation that can meet the challenge of a changing environment. We will provide world class healthcare for all our patients and will be the hospital of choice for the local community. Our healthcare will be underpinned by excellent research, development and education and will be delivered by highly motivated, skilled staff.
This vision will inform our key priorities, which are to:
- Become the hospital of choice>
- Build on users’ experiences of our services, and make them even better
- Stay agile and flexible so we can adapt to change
- Support and develop our teams of highly-motivated, skilled staff
- Use our resources efficiently and effectively
- Innovate – find new, better ways to offer healthcare
These six strategic priorities will be addressed individually as follows:
Become the hospital of choice
- Secure NHS foundation trust status
- Engage effectively and proactively with staff and local community
- Deliver high quality specialist and highly specialist care, underpinned by academic research
- Provide services local to patients
- Deliver and exceed national targets
Build on users’ experiences of our services to improve the patient experience
- Become recognised as a patient-focused organisation
- Drive continuous improvement
- Develop new ways to improve clinical quality and patients’ experiences
- Recognise and actively promote equality and diversity for patients
- Effectively manage infection control
Remain an agile and flexible organisation so we can adapt to change
- Partner effectively with commissioners to deliver integrated services
- Partner increasingly with other NHS acute and foundation trusts
- Explore strategic partnerships with the independent and private sectors
- Explore opportunities for partnerships with international providers of healthcare
Support and develop our teams of highly-motivated, skilled staff
- Be a ‘great place to work’
- Develop programmes to enhance focus on patients and services
- Develop new roles to support redesigned services and new ways to deliver care
- Recognise and actively promote equality and diversity for staff
Use our resources efficiently and effectively
- Generate an operating surplus
- Use modern technology effectively to streamline how we provide care
- Develop business development and marketing tools
- Create an estate that is ‘fit for purpose’
- Embed a culture of financial management within the organisation
- Further develop the performance improvement culture
Innovate – find new and better ways to offer healthcare
- Become the leading organisation in developing and implementing new service models
- Develop a culture that encourages academic innovation to create and deliver innovations in service
- Establish and participate in relevant research programmes
- Consider opportunities for a range of joint ventures initiatives with commercial and/or academic partners
- Deliver our services in a hospital environment of recognised excellence
Current clinical development service strategies to support this include the:
- development of the renal service
- extension of the trust’s emergency catchment area
- consolidation and improvement of the estate infrastructure
- potential relocation of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) to the Royal Free Hospital
- implementation of modern information services
Most importantly, the trust recognises that service development is not a static entity and must continue to develop services in an ever-changing landscape, particularly since the Healthcare for London review by Professor Sir Ara Darzi.
Our strategy
It is three years since the trust agreed its strategy. Much has happened in the interim period and on 28 January 2010 the board agreed an updated strategy that looks forward to the three years ahead.
There have been a number of significant changes since with strategy was last considered, not least of which are the development of the Healthcare for London strategy, the sharply increased financial pressures and our designation as an academic health sciences centre as part of University College London Partners (UCLP).