Annual members' meeting

To be published following the meeting 29/09/2025 - 4.30pm

View Presentation: 2025 Annual Members Meeting

Making sure our sites and services are accessible to our patients is an important patient safety priority and is an area we need to improve.  We have two pieces of work ongoing at the moment:
1) We are scoping out requirements for an accessibility audit of our key sites to identify areas for improvements.  
2) We are undertaking a baseline assessment against the revised accessible information standard    
We do have lots of examples of good practice, however we need this to be consistent across the Trust we are setting up an action plan from the baseline assessment.
We would be happy to discuss further with you and involve you and others in this work.

The Community Diagnostic Centre opened at the end of July, but it is not yet fully staffed. Once fully operational the centre will run from 08.00 to 20.00, 7 days per week. It currently operates 09.00 to 17.00, Monday to Friday. We are continuing to recruit into a number of posts and will extend opening times to include evenings and weekends over the coming months. 

The new units will form a 12 clinic room Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) for Carlisle. The staff working in this facility will see patients with both minor illnesses and minor injuries, with the intention that the UTC will be open 12 hours per day, 7 days per week. Cumbria Health will use some of the rooms in evenings and weekends, allowing patients to continue to access urgent GP appointments out of hours.

The Emergency Department (ED) at the Cumberland Infirmary will continue to see patients who require Emergency Medicine assessment and treatment, such as patients requiring resuscitation or treatment for major trauma. In order to decrease waiting times for patients, the Emergency Medicine service takes a continuous improvement approach to attempt to reduce demand on the Emergency Department by utilising alternatives to ED. This is combined by initiatives to increase capacity within the ED, such as reviewing staffing rotas. Finally, flow through the un-planned care pathways is being promoted by improvements such as model ward principles to promote earlier discharges from the hospital inpatient areas.

It is hoped that by providing a UTC in Carlisle, which is co-located to the ED, there will be an increase in alternatives to ED and therefore reducing demand on ED.  Pressures on Emergency Services and the front door of our hospitals are multifaceted, however providing alternative models of care (such as the UTC) is aligned with the Government’s “NHS 10 year plan 2025” and NHS England’s “delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care”.

We are budgeted to provide 8 Consultant Ophthalmologists but at the moment, we only have:
• 2 x full time consultant 
• 1 x consultant who works 1 day
• 1 x consultant who works 2 days
We then have bank and agency consultants.  We are actively recruiting to vacant posts and looking at different models with our partners to improve our capacity.

Reducing the time people wait for elective care is a high priority for NCIC  We have made progress but there is much more to do.  This months data shows the waiting list for those who have been referred for treatment (37,928) has gone down for the fourth month in a row, despite over 8,500 new referrals to our services.                                                                                                                                                            

The trust has an overarching recovery and improvement plan across all planned care including outpatients, theatres, Cancer services and diagnostics. Improvements are being made in the following areas:

• Processes including Triage, booking and scheduling, clinic and theatre utilisation
• Workforce including recruitment, skill mixing and job plans
• Oversight and scrutiny including governance, validation, data and Business Intelligence

To date we have seen improvements in a number of areas including increased theatre utilisation, a significant reduction in the overall waiting list and better than national performance in theatre late starts.

We are also working in collaboration with peers across the region to support improvements and mutual aid. However we acknowledge that the length of time patients wait is unacceptable and we are actively managing this to ensure our wait times reduce. 

The language we use has evolved over time and although the term ‘parity of esteem’ may not be included the need to think about services that incorporate physical and mental health is explicitly included. 
During the year our Trust published its strategy for mental health and learning disabilities which you can find on our website.  Making sure MH&LD is considered business as usual in everything we do is a central principles in NCICs MH&LD strategy that we are working towards.
Agree that the ABCD model and empowering communities is key, and the ten year plan focussing on shifting from hospital to community will support this.

It is absolutely so fustrating for patients to have to repeat their story not only between primary and secondary care but even within it and that's something we heard from our population when we developed our clinical strategy.                                                                                                                              

We are actively addressing this challenge through a multi-pronged digital strategy focused on shared records, interoperability (systems that can talk to each other) and patient-centred digital services.  Key initiatives include:

• Electronic Patient Record (EPR) Integration: We're implementing a new EPR (Miya Precision) into acute services and working towards a single community EPR that integrates with acute systems. This will enable more seamless access to patient information across care settings. 
• Legacy Record Digitisation: Scanning and archiving paper medical records which makes sure historical data is accessible digitally, reducing the need for patients to repeat their history. 
• Electronic Referral Management: We’re expanding use of the NHS e-Referral Service and implementing electronic triage to streamline the transfer between services.
• Shared Care Records: We’re increasing data sharing with other providers via the Great North Care Record (GNCR), a regional shared care record that supports continuity of care across acute, community, and primary care. 
• Interoperability: Adoption of NHS-approved interoperability standards ensures that systems can communicate effectively, reducing fragmentation and duplication.

This perfectly illustrates why we need that shift from acute to the community, we need to make it much easier for patients to access the services they need as close as possible to their own communty.  At the moment, the Brampton hub can only provide routine blood testing. However, we are developing a community strategy which aligns with the governments 10-year, plan which includes plans plan to develop the community hub model in the future.

We believe our rating reflects the real structural challenges we face as a rural, remote health system, and supports what the new NHS 10-Year Plan calls for in rethinking how care is delivered across the NHS. As a Trust, we’ve stabilised and are improving from where were four years ago, but clearly we still have a lot to do.

We have invested £140m in fantastic new facilities at the West Cumberland Hospital, Community Diagnostic Centre in Workington and the Endoscopy Unit and Urgent Treatment Centre in Carlisle. And another £35m will help us move from analogue to digital through our Electronic patient record.  We have lots of positives to build on, but now we need to go further and faster in the months and years ahead.

We want to work together to reimagine the way we deliver care in North Cumbria. In the months ahead we will be working with partners, patients and staff to review all our services so that we have robust plans in place to ensure they are sustainable and fit for the future.  This will include alignment with the ten year plan for the NHS – moving care closer to home, capitalising on digital opportunities, and working with partners to move towards a preventative agenda. We will also build on our partnerships within the Great North Healthcare Alliance – particularly how we work closely with our colleagues in Newcastle to share resources and expertise to improve patient care

Everyone who works at NCIC should be proud of the progress we’ve made so far, and the fantastic work we all do. We are clear about what still needs to change. And we’re ambitious for what’s ahead – together we can become the best place to receive and give care in the NHS.

Review the full presentation.