New chairs to be appointed to Barts Health and BHRUT
Three hospital trusts in north east London have pledged to continue their successful collaboration following a decision to recruit individual chairs for each organisation.
Barts Health NHS Trust and Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) previously shared a chair in common, the Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, who stepped down after taking up a governmental position in July.
Ms Smith had been in post for almost three years, and that period saw significant progress against the goals set by the two trusts when they established the collaboration.
The boards of Barts Health and BHRUT will now reinstate a chair for each trust rather than a chair in common. Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the third acute trust in north east London, will also continue with an individual chair.
Both trusts remain committed to closer collaboration, both as acute hospitals and as part of the wider Integrated Care System in north east London. The acute provider collaborative (APC) – which includes Homerton Healthcare Trust – will build on the strong relationships and provide the driving force for continued effective collaboration.
To ensure the continued momentum of collaboration, the new chair of Barts Health will also chair the APC, with a direct mandate to develop the key collaboration workstreams. Further joint Non-Executive Directors will also be appointed to the trust boards as opportunities arise in future which will further strengthen the close working.
Marie Gabriel, Chair of North East London Integrated Care System, said: "We are grateful to Jacqui Smith for her leadership in north east London, which has seen Barts Health and BHRUT achieve their goals for collaboration over the last three years.
"As system partners and in discussion with NHS England (London), we have taken the opportunity to look at what arrangements best support us to build greater collaboration, support patient care and achieve financial sustainability.
"We believe that three chairs will help us maintain a strong focus on collaboration, avoid duplication of the work of the APC and ensure there is sufficient focus on the key challenges within each trust. It will also allow closer collaboration with place-based partnerships, ensuring a continued focus on joined up healthcare and tackling local priorities."
System partners are committed to building on successful collaboration between Barts Health and BHRUT over the last three years:
- The executive leadership at BHRUT has been strengthened and is now stable, following a long period of high turnover in senior posts
- Financial governance has been strengthened, meaning that BHRUT has exited special measures and put the trust on a more sustainable footing
- Urgent and emergency care performance has been transformed, with BHRUT the most improved trust in England
- Progressed a series of joint collaborative workstreams to improve services for patients, increasing collaborative capacity, sharing back office services to increase resilience and reduce costs and working towards an electronic patient record
- Created a strong digital partnership which will deliver the electronic patient record programme at BHRUT, transforming clinicians’ abilities to view patient records across both trusts and the wider north east London footprint.
Barts Health Group Chief Executive Officer Shane DeGaris will continue to provide executive leadership to the APC and will oversee delivery of the workstreams, which will all now move into the APC governance framework.
Mr DeGaris and the chief executives of BHRUT and Homerton Healthcare and their executive teams will continue to work closely together, with each CEO personally leading one of the three priorities.
Adam Sharples and Mehboob Khan will continue as acting chairs in Barts Health and BHRUT respectively, while the recruitment process for the new chairs takes its course.
More news