Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was formed in 2001 and gained Foundation Trust status in 2007. It runs three hospitals in Nottinghamshire - King’s Mill Hospital, Newark Hospital, Mansfield Community Hospital. It also operates services from Ashfield Health Village.

The Trust provides healthcare for about 420,000 people across north Nottinghamshire, as well as parts of Derbyshire and Lincolnshire. It employs 4,500 people across its three sites.

Services

The Trust provides hospital and community services, including planned and emergency surgery, children’s services, obstetric and gynaecological care. The emergency department at King’s Mill Hospital treats urgent cases and there is an adjacent GP-led Primary Care 24 centre where non-urgent cases can be referred. Newark Hospital has an Urgent Care Centre which treats a range of conditions and is open 24-hours-a-day.

The children and young people’s service cares for patients and their families from birth until adulthood. Its 18-bed neonatal unit at King’s Mill Hospital provides care for high risk infants. The unit is part of the Trent Neonatal Network and works closely with children’s services in Leicester and Nottingham. Each year the Trust sees more than 8,000 young patients in its outpatient clinics and more than 4,000 children in its community clinics. More than 3,000 patients are looked after on the children’s ward.

Each year the hospitals care for more than 39,000 inpatients; 29,000 day case patients; 411,000 outpatients and therapy patients; and more than 3,200 women give birth at its hospitals. More than 4,000 members of staff work across its hospitals, helped by almost 700 volunteers.

From September 2017 all referrals to the trust are made electronically using the NHS e-Referral Service. This has reduced the rate of patients missing appointments from 10% to 5%.^[1]

Finance

The Trust has a substantial PFI scheme. The £265 million scheme which will run for 30 years covers new buildings, refurbishments, facilities, services, equipment and capital investment equipment costs and will run until March 2043. The partners to the scheme are Innisfree Ltd, Skanska, and Medirest.^[2] Total repayments under the contract will amount to £2.5 billion.^[3]

The Trust paid out £235,000 to two interim Chief Executives during 2012.^[4] Paul O'Connor, Chief Executive, resigned in April 2015 after less than 2 years in post. ^[5]

Performance

Four-hour target in the emergency department quarterly figures from NHS England Data from https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/

Following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission in July 2016, the Trust received an overall rating of "requires improvement" in November 2016 and the regulator NHS Improvement lifted it out of special measures (see media statement), in which it had been placed in 2013 following the Keogh Review. Although rated as "requires improvement" the CQC's report rated the Trust as "good" for care, recognising that it was among the best performing in the country^[6] for the four-hour emergency care standard and other waiting targets, tackling C-Diff, and managing patients at risk of cardiac arrest.

In a media release, Professor Sir Mike Richards, the CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “We returned to Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to check on the trust’s progress with areas we highlighted for improvement following our previous inspection in June 2015. Inspectors found sufficient improvement had taken place for the trust’s overall rating to change from Inadequate to Requires Improvement.

In October 2013 the Trust had been put into the highest risk category by the Care Quality Commission.^[7] In October 2015 a further CQC report showed deterioration. Only one of 18 high-level action points had been completed and it was rated inadequate for safety, effectiveness and being well-led. There were 54 serious incidents between March 2014 and February 2015 and 88 patients died of "unspecified septicaemia".^[8] Sir Mike Richards recommended that the trust stay in special measures in October 2015 after the CQC reduced its rating to “inadequate”. A Quality Improvement Programme was implemented during 2016.

The regulators had said the trust needed a “close tie-up with a long term partner” in order to improve.^[9] A merger with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust was planned, and Peter Homa, Chief Executive of Nottingham took the same role at the trust in July 2016. He stepped down later in the year after NHS Improvement said the merger would not proceed and Nottingham University Hospitals would focus on operational challenges around its Emergency Department performance and finances.

Both trusts remain committed to a long-term strategic partnership and will continue to work together as partners in the Mid-Nottinghamshire Better Together vanguard and the Mid-Nottinghamshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan, which sets out a five-year strategy for health and social care services from 2016 to 2021.

In 2014-2015 the trust was given a loan of £6.2 million by the Department of Health which is supposed to be paid back in five years.^[10]

See also

• List of NHS trusts

References