Our clinical strategy has focused on developing our clinical services, particularly our emergency pathway and a number of our more specialist services, to make sure we are meeting the needs of our patients and commissioners.

We have done a lot of work with our partners to redesign local health services, creating alternatives to hospital admission, reducing length of stay and emergency admissions.

One of our key priorities was to continue to make improvements to the way we manage our emergency patients, in particular the journey these patients make through our hospitals, from admission (usually via A&E), treatment to final discharge.

The Trust continues to be proactive in developing relationships between partner organisations in North West Surrey – such as community services (Virgin Care) and Social Services.

We have continued to develop our relationship with local GPs, particularly in their new commissioning role. Our business development team has regular contact with practices within our catchment area and provides a GP liaison service. The team also provides a hotline for GPs to contact to resolve issues and problems quickly. This continued close contact is enabling the development of new services in a variety of specialities particularly for common conditions.

We also hold regular meetings between our consultants and GPs to help improve communication and resolve issues. We distribute our electronic GP newsletter, GP News’ to around 700 practices across our catchment area and beyond, and have improved our service directory to ensure our clinical services are easily accessed by GPs.