Quality and Safety Strategy

East Cheshire NHS Trust (ECT) provides hospital and community health care services for the local population of Eastern Cheshire.

Quality improvement at ECT is about continuously improving standards to ensure we provide safe care, better outcomes and positive experiences for the people who access our services.

The NHS 10 year plan sets out a number of ambitions and this Quality and Safety Strategy demonstrates our commitment to deliver safe, effective and personal care whilst working in partnership to develop innovative and integrated ways of working that drive quality improvement. This will support the trust in achieving its vision to provide the best care in the right place.

As a trust rated overall GOOD following CQC inspection we will continue to have a strong focus on demonstrating compliance with regulatory safety requirements. Achieving improvement in patient access standards is a key priority for the trust. A culture of continuous learning from incidents, complaints and good practice is fundamental to patient safety, engaging with people for whom we provide care or services.

The Eastern Cheshire area has a high elderly population compared to the national average, with a high percentage of people aged over 65 and over 85. This is expected to increase further in the future, which will result in rising demands on health and care services. It is therefore essential that we work with partners to make the best use of all available resources. Many patients are living well with one or more long-term conditions and our ability to treat the person rather than their condition is something that has been at the forefront of our work with health, care and third sector partners as we develop our five care communities within our catchment area.

We recognise that the best place for care is often in the person’s own home and enabling people to maintain their independence is a high priority. When people require essential hospital treatment our aim is to provide timely and responsive care and we will continue to ensure that our staff have the necessary knowledge, skills and competence.

This Quality and Safety Strategy has been developed during Quality Forum workshops and with feedback from wider staff groups, service users and our Commissioners. This embeds the values and behaviours we expect throughout every aspect of our work with a clear focus on safe, effective and person-centred care.