About us
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provide services from two main hospitals, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital, and a number of clinics across London and the South-East.
We have over 6,000 members of staff that are PROUD to Care for nearly one million people. Both hospitals provide full clinical services, including full maternity, emergency and children’s, in addition to a range of community-based services across London, such as award-winning sexual health and HIV clinics.
We’re one of the best preforming Trusts in the country. We’re also one of the top trusts to work for – our staff say they’re engaged, motivated, and would recommend us as a place to work and receive treatment. Our Trust has been rated by the Care Quality Commission as ‘Good’ in all five of the main domains of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led, giving an us overall rating of ‘Good’. We’ve also been awarded an ‘Outstanding’ rating for ‘use of resources’ by an NHS Improvement inspection.
Our facilities are some of the best in the country and we have maintained investment in our estate, as demonstrated by our state of the art adult and neonatal critical care facilities at Chelsea and Westminster in partnership with our charity, CW+ and generous donors, and improved facilities at West Middlesex. Both hospitals have major A&E departments, treating over 300,000 patients each year. The Trust is the second largest maternity service in England, delivering over 11,000 babies every year. Our specialist care includes the world-renowned burns service, which is the leading centre in London and the South East, paediatric in-patients and outpatients under the west London children’s healthcare initiative, and our specialist HIV and award winning sexual health care services.
In partnership with CW+ our hospital charity we build and enhance clinical facilities to create an outstanding care environment for our patients and for our staff. Through CW Innovation, jointly led by the Trust and the charity, we are growing our existing portfolio of innovation projects and our reputation in this field, to become a national leader for innovation within the NHS. We aspire to provide locally-based and accessible services enhanced by world-class clinical expertise. Our excellent financial and operational performance is a source of great pride to us. It is nationally recognised and sees us simultaneously achieving our financial plan while continuing to be one of the best performers against the national access standards for accident and emergency (A&E), referral to treatment (RTT) and cancer.
We play an active role in the North West London Integrated Care System, working across North West London to deliver safe and timely care and are the lead employer for the vaccination programme.
Our Priorities
1. Deliver high-quality patient-centred care
Patients, their friends, family and carers will be treated with unfailing kindness and respect by every member of staff in every department and their experience and quality of care will be second to none.
2. Be the employer of choice
We will provide every member of staff with the support, information, facilities and environment they need to develop in their roles and careers. We will recruit and retain the people we need to deliver high-quality services to our patients and other service users.
3. Deliver better care at lower cost
We will look to continuously improve the quality of care and patient experience through the most efficient use of available resources (financial and human, including staff, partners, stakeholders, volunteers and friends).
Our Values
The Trust has launched its values to patients and members of the public to demonstrate the standard of care and experience they should expect from any of our services.
These values form the mnemonic PROUD:
Putting patients first
Responsive to, and supportive of, patients and staff
Open, welcoming and honest
Unfailing kind, treating everyone with respect, compassion and dignity
Determined to develop our skills and continuous improve the quality of care
Equality and Diversity
The Trust’s goal is to be a hospital of choice by improving all aspects of our patients’ experiences. A key element of improving patient experience is to ensure that we have a highly skilled, motivated, diverse, productive and patient focused workforce. It is our aim to provide care and services that are appropriate and sensitive to all. We continually strive to make sure that our services have equality of access and are non-discriminatory.
We are proud of our role in the local community and we are keen to embrace the many cultures and traditions that make this community so diverse, and to ensure that these cultures and traditions are celebrated rather than becoming barriers to accessing services.
The diversity of our local community is reflected in the ethnic and cultural mix of our staff. By reflecting the diversity that surrounds us, our staff are better placed to understand and provide for the cultural and spiritual needs of our patients.
Innovation and Improvement
The Trust has the aim to achieve an overall Trust rating of ‘Outstanding’, whilst maintaining ‘Outstanding’ rating for Use of Resources. The delivery of this is within the external context of:
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Increasing quality expectations
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National financial pressures
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Increased demand on non-elective care
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National workforce challenges in attracting, training and retaining high quality people
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National & local policy changes (reconfiguration plans, integrated care, shared care etc.)
The Trust has developed an improvement programme aligned with our three priorities (outlined on page 5) to support the continual delivery of affordable, high quality of care. This will focus on ensuring that:
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Continuous improvement becomes everyone’s job.
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Development of an organisational culture which enables our workforce to focus on quality, innovation and productivity.
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Staff are ‘Enthused, Enabled and Empowered’ to improve their services
Development of a standardised Trust-wide approach to improvement which supports delivery of the Quality Strategy and Quality Priorities which are:
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To improve health outcomes
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To increase clinical effectiveness
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To enhance patient experience
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To translate our learning into better outcomes for everyone using our services
We have a reputation for driving improvement and our clinical services strategy is supported by our commitment to innovation and research, where our priority is translating research ‘from bench to bedside’, bringing the best evidence to bear in respect of clinical care and patient experience.
We are continuing on our improvement journey and continue to provide a strong focus on improvements to management processes and a leadership approach that seeks to be very visible and inclusive. This involves regular senior management walkabouts and the Perfect Day programme, where non-clinical staff support their clinical colleagues in the delivery of frontline services for a day each month. We have also embedded a Senior Partner Programme, which sees an executive partner in every single clinical area, who visits that area regularly and assures the continuity and quality of care. We have also regularly recruit clinical staff as Clinical Innovation and Improvement Fellows.
Technology/Digital Programmes
The Trust is working closely with CW+ to bring the latest health innovations and technologies to the Trust. CW+’s grants and innovation programme supports staff to fund new innovative projects to advance the delivery of healthcare in our hospitals. CW+ has supported numerous health innovation projects for the Trust including wearable sensor technologies, augmented reality, telehealth and self-management, virtual clinics, smartphone apps and many more. CW+ also sources innovation through collaborations with third parties such as the Digital Health. London Accelerator, the NHS Accelerator and the Microsoft Accelerator to match the latest innovations from within the wider health ecosystem with real-time healthcare needs at the Trust.
Covid-19
Chelsea and Westminster has been on the front-line throughout the pandemic and our staff have showed courage, resilience, compassion and determination. In response to the second wave we surged our ICU and other ventilation support proportionately more than any other Trust in London. The proportion of staff treating Covid-19-positive patients, and the proportion of non-clinical staff redeployed to clinical areas were above the average.
Each wave of the pandemic has been tough but there was a sense of unity and common purpose, implementing necessary changes to wards and pathways at pace. Organisation and professional barriers dropped, and there was substantial innovation and a strong research response. We also played a major role in supporting the NW London response, and continue to support the vaccination campaigns. Warm spontaneous support from our communities was much appreciated.
The physical and mental health and broader wellbeing of staff was and remains a priority, and we introduced a variety of new support for individuals and teams. The pandemic brought deaths of much loved colleagues as well as sickness and isolation. The unequal toll of Covid-19 in the population was mirrored in the safety concerns of our black, asian and minority ethnic staff, which we addressed in particular through a rigorous risk assessment and vaccination programme. Senior management was visible, and the importance of sharing success and thanking everyone was underlined on a daily basis.