Work is nearing completion on a £20 million investment in state of the art operating theatres at Darlington Memorial Hospital. An official launch event for the scheme, which includes 6 new theatres as well as upgraded mortuary facilities and a bereavement suite, will take place later this month. The investment follows a £27m upgrade to the infrastructure of the hospital building over the past few years, ‘a commitment to the future of the hospital’, says the NHS organisation which runs the hospital. County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT) is the largest provider of integrated care – hospital and community services – in the North East and last year had over two million patient contacts. Sue Jacques, Chief Executive of CDDFT said: “We serve a population of 650,000 people delivering services from our main hospital sites in Darlington, Durham and Bishop Auckland as well as our community hospitals, a range of other community settings and within patients’ homes. It is a responsibility we take extremely seriously and we have a dedicated workforce of over 8,000 colleagues striving to provide the highest quality care. “This is reflected in our performance last year.
Every year we must produce an annual report – a look back on the previous year and how we have performed both operationally and financially. We’ve just finalised our report for 2016/17 which will be formally presented at our annual general meeting in September. “I hope many local residents will join us at this meeting to hear our highlights from the year. These include the organisation performing well against national targets, we successfully met national performance targets including 92% of patients receiving treatment within 18 weeks of referral, despite unprecedented demand on our A&E services we delivered a strong performance and achieved the target we had agreed with NHS Improvement, and we again performed well on cancer targets.
We also delivered on our financial plans to end the year with a surplus and therefore generating the cash necessary for us to continue to invest in the future for our patients. “Further examples of this investment include the expansion last year of our centre of excellence for orthopaedic surgery at Bishop Auckland Hospital and we also opened a new state of the art simulation training facility at Bishop Auckland which is placing us at the forefront of education and training across the region. “Our success is the result of such a dedicated and passionate workforce, they are our greatest asset and of course, the continued support we receive from our patients and local communities – thank you.” The Trust has also invested in mobile technology which means community teams can spend more time with patients in their homes rather than having to travel to and from an office base to complete their notes.
On the hospital wards new technology is also supporting staff to record patient information electronically which means key data is available at a glance. Professor Paul Keane OBE, Chairman of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust said: “It has been a challenging year but I am pleased that we have achieved the majority of our targets and in some instances exceeded expectation. These outcomes could not have been realised without the dedication, commitment and hard work of all of our 8000 staff. I continually visit our service delivery teams and the enthusiasm, innovation and compassion by staff is so very evident to see and this helps us continue to enhance the quality of care for our patients and communities, which is our absolute priority.”
