Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
Type	NHS hospital trust
Hospitals	Royal Shrewsbury Hospital Princess Royal Hospital
Chair	Dr Catriona McMahon
Chief executive	Louise Barnett
Staff	5,000
Website	www.sath.nhs.uk

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is the main provider of hospital services for Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and North Powys. It runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, Oswestry Maternity Unit, and Wrekin Community Clinic, Euston House, Telford, in Shropshire, England. It is one of a small number of English NHS Trusts which takes patients from over the border in Wales.

Up to June 2019, 250 cases of concern in maternity were being investigated by an enquiry led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden commissioned in 2016 by Jeremy Hunt. On 24 June it was announced that another 300 cases had been uncovered, over a period of 40 years.^[1] The interim report maintains the number of cases, "seems to represent a longstanding culture at this trust that is toxic to improvement effort".^[2][3]

As with many Trusts operating over multiple sites it has long been under pressure to concentrate services on fewer sites.^[4] In 2012, general and vascular surgery was successfully centralised at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. In 2014, consultant obstetrics and inpatients paediatrics was centralised at the Princess Royal Hospital. In November 2017 it was agreed that emergency services at Princess Royal Hospital should be downgraded and moved to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.^[5] A large-scale programme of hospital reconfiguration in Shropshire called FutureFit has been in progress since 2013.^[6] In March 2018, the Department of Health and Social Care gave the go-ahead to more than £300 million worth of funding for the transformation of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. The plans went out to public consultation in May 2018.^[7] In January 2019 the plans to convert the accident and emergency department in Telford into an urgent care centre and turn the hospital into a planned care site were approved by the clinical commissioning group.^[8]

The trust was one of five in England to benefit from a five-year, £12.5m programme announced by Jeremy Hunt in July 2015 to bring in Virginia Mason Medical Center to assist English hospitals using their clinical engagement and culture tools including the Patient Safety Alert System and electronic dashboard. Hunt said “The achievements at Virginia Mason over the past decade are truly inspirational and I’m delighted they will now help NHS staff to learn the lessons that made their hospital one of the safest in the world – patients will see real benefits as a result.”