About us
About Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust provides acute and specialist healthcare for over 1.2 million people every year. We are one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, with close to 12,000 staff.
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Our five hospitals – Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea, St Mary’s and the Western Eye – have a long track record in research and education, influencing clinical practice nationally and worldwide. We have a growing number of community services and provide private healthcare in dedicated facilities on all of our sites, including at the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital.
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With our partners, Imperial College London, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, we form Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre. This is one of 11 academic health science centres in the UK, working to ensure the rapid translation of research into better patient care and excellence in education.
Our hospitals
We provide care from five hospitals on four sites:
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Charing Cross Hospital: providing a range of acute and specialist services including cancer care and a 24/7 accident and emergency department; it also hosts the hyper-acute stroke unit for the region and is a growing hub for integrated care in partnership with local GPs and community providers.
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Hammersmith Hospital: a specialist hospital renowned for its strong research connections. It offers a range of services, including renal, haematology, cancer and cardiology care, and provides the regional specialist heart attack centre. As well as being a major base for Imperial College London, the site also hosts the clinical sciences centre of the Medical Research Council.
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Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea Hospital: a maternity, women’s and neonatal care hospital, also with strong research links. It has a midwife-led birth centre as well as specialist services for complicated pregnancies, foetal and neonatal care.
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St Mary’s Hospital: the major acute hospital for north west London as well as a maternity centre with consultant and midwife-led services. The hospital provides care across a wide range of specialties and runs one of four major trauma centres in London in addition to its 24/7 A&E department.
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Western Eye Hospital: a specialist eye hospital with a 24/7 A&E department.
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Increasingly, we provide our services in community facilities and in partnership with GPs and community, mental health and social care organisations.
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Imperial Private Healthcare: Imperial Private Healthcare is our private care division, offering a range of services across all of our sites. This includes the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital, the Thames View at Charing Cross Hospital and the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Wing at Hammersmith Hospital. The income from our private care is invested back into supporting all of our services.
Research, education and innovation
As well as being part of Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre, the Trust, with Imperial College, hosts one of 20 National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) biomedical research centres (BRCs). This designation is given to the most outstanding NHS and university research partnerships in the country, leaders in scientific translation, and early adopters of new insights in technologies, techniques and treatments for improving health.
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The NIHR Imperial BRC currently supports over 500 active research projects across 12 different disease areas. The Trust is also part of the NIHR Health Informatics Collaborative (NIHR HIC) together with Oxford University Hospitals, Cambridge University Hospitals, University College London Hospitals and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trusts. This collaboration enables NHS clinical data to be linked and shared to allow new insights into care and treatment through research.
As one of the NHS’s Global Digital Exemplars, we are proud to be leading the way in using advances in digital technology to make tangible improvements to the care of our patients.
We are a major provider of education and training for doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals including therapists, pharmacists, radiographers and healthcare scientists. In 2018/19, some 900 Imperial College London medical undergraduates trained with us. We had over 520 student nurses and midwives in training in the year, many of whom gained their first job or qualification with us.
Our charities
We work closely with Imperial Health Charity which helps our hospitals do more through grants, arts, volunteering and fundraising. In 2018/19, the charity invested £1.68m in a wide range of initiatives for the benefit of patients and staff.
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The charity’s grants programme helped fund major redevelopments, research and medical equipment. This support enabled major renovations to the children’s intensive care unit at St Mary’s Hospital, and the start of an important wayfinding project across our hospitals. The development of a new treatment for essential tremor was supported by the purchase of focused ultrasound brain hardware, while dementia patients at Charing Cross Hospital benefitted from a specially designed new garden opened to mark the hospital’s 200th anniversary.
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Imperial Health Charity also manages volunteering across all five hospitals, adding value to the work of staff and helping to improve the hospital experience for patients. In the last year, the volunteer community has grown significantly with a range of dynamic new roles. The charity also launched its first ever youth volunteering programme, giving 16-25 year-olds the opportunity to support their local hospital.
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In addition, the charity has continued to develop its art collection and arts engagement programme, providing creative workshops and activities for patients and offering benefits to Trust staff through the Staff Arts Club.
During 2018/19, the Trust also received generous support from COSMIC (Children of St Mary’s Intensive Care), which also helped to raise funds for the children’s intensive care unit at St Mary’s Hospital, the Winnicott Foundation, which raises funds to improve care for premature and sick babies at St Mary’s Hospital, and each of the Friends of St Mary’s, Charing Cross, and Hammersmith hospitals.
Our lay partners
We are committed to increasing and improving the involvement of patients and the public in every aspect of our work. An important element of our involvement approach is our community of lay partners – with experience or interest in the Trust who form part of our project and programme governance. The Trust currently has 42 lay partner roles supporting services and projects.
Our commissioners
Almost half of our care is commissioned by north west London local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), about 40 per cent is specialist services commissioned by NHS England and the remaining 10 per cent or so is commissioned by other commissioners including CCGs beyond our local area.
The eight CCGs in north west London cover:
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Brent
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Central London
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Ealing
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Hammersmith & Fulham
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Harrow
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Hillingdon
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Hounslow
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West London
During 2018/19, the north west London CCGs came together under a single leadership structure. They formed a joint committee which has its own decision-making powers over certain health issues in north west London.
North West London health and care partnership
Over 30 NHS, local authority and voluntary sector partners, including our Trust, are working together to improve health and care across north west London. The first five-year sustainability and transformation plan, one of 44 such plans across England, was published in October 2016. Its five delivery areas are:
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improving health and wellbeing
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better care for people with long-term conditions
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better care for older people
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improving mental health services
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safe, high quality and sustainable hospital services
Since 2012, the NHS in north west London has also been working on a programme to re-shape and improve services under the banner of ‘shaping a healthier future’. With the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan in January 2019, followed by a Government announcement in March, the North West London health and care partnership agreed to draw the shaping a healthier future programme to a conclusion. As part of our response to the NHS Long Term Plan, we will bring our on-going efforts to improve health and care together in a new programme called the NHS North West London long term plan.
Our regulators
NHS Improvement is responsible for overseeing both NHS trusts and foundation trusts. During 2018/19, NHS Improvement and NHS England developed closer working arrangements creating a joint senior leadership team – the NHS Executive Group – including a new London regional director.
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The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. The Trust is currently rated overall as ‘requires improvement’; made up of ‘good’ for the domains of caring and effective, and ‘requires improvement’ for the domains of safe, responsive and well-led. This rating follows a comprehensive inspection of Trust services in 2014. Since then a number of core services inspections have taken place as well as our first well-led inspection which was in December 2017. Our inspection reports show that we are on an improvement trajectory.
We had further core services inspections of critical care, children and young people, maternity, and neonatal services in February 2019, followed by a second well-led inspection in April 2019. We expect to receive the inspection reports and any changes to our ratings later in 2019/20.