Northern Trust Annual Quality Report 2023-24

Chief Executive message

Jennifer Welsh, Chief Executive

As Chief Executive of the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, I am delighted to share the Annual Quality Report with you. The report covers the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 and shows that despite the increased demand and pressure on our services, our staff are always working to improve our services and provide the best care possible with the resources that we have.

Our health and social care system is under mounting pressure and sustained investment is vital if we are to address the long-term needs of our population and fully recover our services from the setbacks caused by the impact of the pandemic. We are hopeful that after years of talking about the need for transformation in health and social care, real progress can now be made, and that there is a will and a determination to move forward together, with strong political leadership.

The effects of the changing demographic of our population are acutely felt across primary care, emergency and unscheduled care, and particularly on community care. A redesign of how we deliver these services is now critical and I am pleased that within the Northern Trust, we are making our own progress around transformation. In 2023/24 for example we centralised inpatient births on the Antrim site, ensuring that we have a sustainable model of maternity care for many years to come.

We also published our Strategic Vision for Causeway Hospital, setting out how we intend to enhance and develop our service provisions from Causeway as part of our acute hospital network.

Our commitment is, and always will be, to delivering for our community, our patients, service users and our people. We recognise that each of us has a part to play and it is only as we move forward together that we can make real progress as we try to fulfil our aim of providing compassionate care with our community, in our community.

Jennifer Welsh
Chief Executive

Foreword

In 2011, the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (now renamed to Department of Health (DoH)) launched Quality 2020: A 10 Year Strategy to ‘Protect and Improve Quality in Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland’.

The Strategy defines quality under 3 main headings:

  • Safety – avoiding and preventing harm to patients and clients from the care, treatment and support that is intended to help them
  • Effectiveness – the degree to which each patient and client received the right care, at the right time, in the right place, with the best outcome
  • Patient and Client Focus – all patients and clients are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect, and should be fully involved in decisions affecting their treatment, care and support

The Northern Health and Social Care Trust Annual Quality Report is set out in line with the 5 strategic themes within the Quality 2020 Strategy. These are:

  1. Transforming the culture
  2. Strengthening the workforce
  3. Measuring the improvement
  4. Raising the standards
  5. Integrating the care

This report aims to increase public accountability and drive quality improvement within the Trust. It reviews past annual performance against corporate priorities and the goals that were set, and identifies areas for further improvement over the coming year.

The Trust clearly identifies continual quality improvement as a key priority in the delivery and modernisation of health and social care.

About the Northern Health and Social Care Trust

It was a busy year for the Trust with increased demand for services, and this is reflected in the Trust’s activity:

  • 79,191 inpatients, inclusive of elective inpatients (compared to 83,275 in 2022/23)
  • 596,279 acute outpatients across all specialties (compared to 523,842 in 2022/23)
  • 158,070 attendances at Emergency Department and Minor Injury Units (increase from 150,557)
  • 40,565 day case patients across all specialties (increase from 36,039)
  • 3,442 births (decrease from 3,650)
  • 815 children looked after by Trust (increase from 774)
  • 502 children on child protection register (increase from 464)
  • 4,166 domiciliary care packages for older people provided in the community (decrease from 4,982)

Annual Quality Report 2023-24 (PDF)

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