An Easy Read version of our Quality Account

2009/10

What is in this report?

•Chairman’s introduction

•Chief Executive’s summary and declaration of accuracy

•Priorities for improvement 2010/11

•What others say about Nottingham University Hospitals

•Public involvement in our Quality Account

•How to find out more

This document is available in other languages and formats upon request from the Communications Team at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust on 0115 924 9924 ext 63562 or by email at nuhcommunications@nuh.nhs.uk

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Chairman’s introductionWelcome to the first Nottingham University Hospitals National Health Service Trust Quality Account.

This report tells you about how we are moving towards being the best teaching Trust in England.

We have set a whole hospitals change programme called:

‘Better for you’

This will improve the quality of all the services we provide.

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We have talked with our patients, families, Foundation Trust members, staff, and the people of Nottingham about what should be in the report.

We know that all of us must work better with our patients if we are to improve our services.

We have worked with patients and staff to make new service standards.

These standards are to ensure that patient experience is the best it can be, all day, every day.

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Chief Executive’s summary and declaration of accuracy This tells you about what is in the report and that the information in it is correct.

Patients and visitors tell us that some of their worries about coming into hospital is getting an infection.

The Care Quality Commission did an unannounced visit in May 2009 to inspect our infection control and regulations.The inspectors said that we protect patients, staff and visitors from infections.

Less patients caught infections than in other years and we had fewer infections than most similar hospitals.

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Our Emergency Department is one of the busiest in Europe.

The target for patients to be seen within 4 hours has always been hard for us to do.

Patients deserve to be seen quickly, and get quick expert help.

Between January and the end of March this year most of our patients were seen and treated within the 4 hour target.

We know that we have not seen, admitted to hospital, treated and let people go home as quickly as we should between April and December 2009.

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Priorities for improvement

Here are the things that we think are the most important for us to do over the coming year.

We have made plans about what needs doing to make our services get better.

We will also make sure that we check and report back to the Board about how well we are doing.

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Priority 1

To reduce harm that should not happen when people use Nottingham University Hospitals.

Patients tell us that they want to know there will be no mistakes in their care.

This includes:

•Reducing the number of people who die while in hospital

•Reducing the number of patients harmed

•Reducing the number of patients who fall

Priority 2

To reduce Nottingham University Hospitals infections.

Patients tell us that some of their biggest worries about coming into hospital that they will get an avoidable infection.

We will reduce the number of patients who get infections when they use our services.

We will check patients to see if they have an infection before or during their stay in hospital.

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Priority 3 To improve staff training.

We know that well-trained staff are really important for excellent quality care and patient experience.

We will:

•Increase the number of staff trained in quality improvement ways of working

•Increase the number of staff involved in clinical checks

•Improve how staff work with and support patient needs

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Priority 4 To improve application of Nottingham University Hospitals research in clinical practice.

Research is a very important part of what we do.

We want more patients to be in clinical trials.

We will:

•Increase the number of patients involved in high quality clinical trials

•set up a way for finding out the number of patients who can take part and whether they were offered the opportunity

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What others say about Nottingham University Hospitals

Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission scored us as being ‘fair’ for the Quality of Services in 2008/09.

We did not do well in some of the things they looked at.

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We did better than expected in others.

Dr Foster Good Hospital Guide

This is a guide that tells you how well hospitals across the country are doing.

They write reports to tell hospitals where the areas they need to be better in.

We scored well on our commitment to patient safety.

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For most of the things Dr Foster Good Hospital Guide checked we did as well as expected.

In other areas we did not do as well but we have put things in place to improve this.

Complaints

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Our Board received monthly reports that the public can look at.

Complaints, criticisms, comments and compliments give us important information that we can use to improve our services.

We have found that we must improve communication with patients and between team members.

To help we have our ‘Here for You’ programme.

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Outpatients, people who do not stay in hospital.

Our outpatient survey showed we did very well on:

•having a doctor people could trust and have confidence in

•not changing appointment dates

•providing enough information on conditions/treatment

Most people were very happy with the care we provided.

Patient surveysThis is about asking patients what they think about our services.

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Inpatients, people who stay in hospital.

Our inpatient survey showed we did as well as most big hospitals around:

•going into hospital

•the hospital and ward

•doctors

•nurses

•care and treatment

•operations

•leaving hospital

•what patients thought in general about their experience

We did not do so well in explaining to patients what would happen to them during their appointment.

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We scored higher than most other hospitals on:

•having separate wards for men and women

•what people thought about stopping infections and how we are doing this

Reducing harm from falls

Falls are the most often reported incident in UK hospitals.

It is important to us that we reduce the number of fall and how bad they are.

We have spent a lot of time recording falls and are working hard to have fewer falls.

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Public involvement in our Quality Account This about how we make sure people get involved and have a say on how we provide our services.

When we asked people what they thought we found that:

•Nearly all the people asked wanted us to include information about how clean our hospitals are

•For patient safety, nearly everyone said that their main worry was getting infections

For quality of patient care, people said that they were particularly interested in waiting times for and during treatment.

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For more information you can look at the FULL REPORT.

It tells you why we have chosen the priorities and how we will check to make sure they are making our services better for patients.

It will tell you about the targets we have to meet by law which also helps us to check ourselves against other hospitals to see how well we are doing.

There is more information about safety and the experience of patients across all the services we provide.

It tells you who helped us to decide what the priorities should be and what was put in the report.

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How to find out more

You can get the full report by contacting us as follows:

Communications TeamNottingham University Hospitals NHS TrustQueen’s Medical Centre campusE Floor, South BlockDerby RoadNottinghamNG7 2UH

0115 924 9924 extension 63562

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communications@nuh.nhs.uk

www.nuh.nhs.uk

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Thank you to Photosymbols for the use photosymbols 3.

Easy Read version of Quality Account:

Konrad Bakalarczyk

Nottinghamshire Learning Disability Partnership Board Access Office

Nottinghamshire County Council

Printed June 2010