Message from Dr Atul Aggarwal, on behalf of Barking and Dagenham, Havering and
Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups:
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today published its latest report into the services
provided at Queen’s Hospital Romford and King George Hospital Ilford. The NHS Trust
Development Authority has also announced that that Barking, Havering and Redbridge
University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) will be placed into special measures. As chair of
Havering Clinical Commissioning Group and also on behalf of neighbouring CCGs in Barking
and Dagenham and Redbridge, I wanted to outline the commissioners’ response.
As GPs, the safety of our patients is our number one priority. We are working hard to
improve the quality and safety of the care they receive and we take this latest report very
seriously.
We understand that BHRUT faces a huge challenge, and its leadership team, together with
the CCGs and other partners, has been working hard to resolve the issues. But, despite
some recent improvements, it’s clear the trust needs more help. We believe that being
placed in special measures will give the trust the support needed to address the issues it
faces and we are committed to continuing to work closely with them to achieve this.
Since GPs took over responsibility for commissioning health services in April, we have
worked closer than ever before with the trust and have seen some real improvements in this
time. Maternity services have shown real, sustained improvement this year and, together
with health and social care partners across the system, we have seen progress in improving
hospital services with the recruitment of more doctors and nurses and starting to introduce
seven-day working for consultants and senior doctors.
However, there are still some very serious concerns - especially around A&E services. We
will work together with the trust and other local partners on the urgent care board to deliver
safe, high quality services for our patients as soon as possible. This includes action to
reduce waiting times, such as:
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making better use of urgent care centres so they are more effective and see more
patients
improving discharge processes to free up beds
increasing the numbers of urgent appointments at family doctors surgeries.
We want local people to have safe, high quality hospital services and we are committed to
working with NHS England, the Trust Development Authority and local partners to support
the trust.
If you would like to discuss this in more detail, my fellow CCG chairs and I are happy to meet
with you - please contact Andy Strickland andrew.strickland@onel.nhs.uk to arrange a
meeting.
Dr Atul Aggarwal
Andy Strickland
Head of Communications
andrew.strickland@onel.nhs.uk
020 8926 5165
Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups
Becketts House, 2-14 Ilford Hill, Ilford, Essex IG1 2QX