Introducing our hospitals
Who we are - World-renowned teaching hospitals
Barts and The London is one of Britain’s leading healthcare providers. Our world-renowned hospitals – St Bartholomew’s (Barts) in the City, The Royal London in Whitechapel and The London Chest in Bethnal Green – have made, and continue to make, an outstanding contribution to modern medicine.
The hospitals’ full portfolio of specialist centres includes the country’s biggest heart attack centre, one of Europe's most advanced cancer centres, one of the UK’s largest children’s hospitals and a highly successful fertility centre. Home to London’s air ambulance, Barts and The London is also one of the capital’s leading trauma and emergency care centres, offering surgical expertise that also benefits patients requiring more routine procedures.
Where we've come from - Outstanding contribution to modern medicine
Barts is Britain's oldest hospital (founded 1123) and our school of medicine and dentistry was the country’s first. The history of modern medicine can be traced through our distinguished alumni – clinicians such as founder of modern medicine, William Harvey, Parkinson (Parkinson's Disease), Langdon-Down (Down's Syndrome) and Barnardo (child welfare). Today, our groundbreaking work continues, with world-class research into the cures and treatments of tomorrow.
Trace the our history of modern medicine >>
What we do - Bringing excellence to life
Our daily mission is literally bringing excellence to life – giving patients the best possible care so that they can live better, fuller, longer lives. Our tradition of clinical excellence continues today through the comprehensive care provided by our specialist hospitals and centres, from cancer, cardiac and digestive diseases to trauma and emergency care.
Barts and The London’s long tradition of clinical excellence continues today, with some of the best clinical results in the UK - evidenced by one of the best survival rate records in the NHS. By delivering excellence in everything we do, we hope to be the first choice for patients, whether they need routine treatments or more specialist care.
Who we care for - two million people of east London
We receive referrals from overseas and throughout the UK, but the majority of our 960,921 annual attendances are patients living locally. East London is Europe's most diverse community – from the financial districts of The City and Canary Wharf, to some of Britain's most deprived areas.
Where we're heading - our vision for the future
Our vision is to be one of the best healthcare providers in the world - treating every patient as an important individual and improving the life prospects of our communities and future generations. We will do this by working to prevent ill health, diagnosing disease early and delivering compassionate care to the highest international standards.
Put simply, we want to achieve great medicine and great care, hand in hand with excellence in research and education.
Education and research
We work collaboratively with our academic partners, especially those at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and at St Bartholomew School of Nursing and Midwifery, to support the effective planning and commissioning of education to meet the changing workforce needs of healthcare organisations across north-east London in the future.
Closer alignment of research, teaching and clinical services means that increasing numbers of patients at our hospitals will be some of the first to receive new treatments and cures.
One of the best survival rate records in the NHS
Barts and The London hospitals produce some of the best clinical outcomes in the UK – evidenced by one of the best survival rate records in the NHS.
A national report produced by Dr Foster shows that our three hospitals continue to have an excellent survival rate record – a clear indicator of clinical excellence.
Performance highlights 2010/11
Amazing things happen at our hospitals every day. We save lives and we give people their lives back. Everyone wants us to deliver the highest standards of treatment, care and compassion, and in the last 12 months we have made significant progress.
World class clinical quality Working together, our internationally renowned clinicians and researchers helped us to maintain one of the best survival rates in the country. Our standardised survival rates (between April and December 2010) were 27% better than expected, given the nature and complexity of the cases we treat.
Demonstrating excellence in safety We achieved level three in the NHS Litigation Authority’s risk management standards, a considerable achievement, demonstrating validated high levels of patient and staff safety across our organisation. There are only four other trusts in London at this level and 17 in the whole country.
Improving the patient experience We achieved ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ ratings in the Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) 2010 inspections of environment, food and privacy and dignity for each hospital.
Delivering environmental improvements The first phase of the redevelopment project to create landmark new hospitals at both The Royal London and Barts was completed in March 2010 with the opening of Barts Cancer Centre, unquestionably one of the most advanced cancer centres in Europe.
Safety Express This two-year national safety initiative aims to reduce patient harm, and is one of our top quality priorities for the year.
Compassionate care The provision of compassionate care is a key objective this year. Building on a pilot project in four wards, strategies are being developed to support clinical areas in embedding compassionate caring in practice.
Standards and assurance Improving our standards in areas such as outpatient services, cleanliness and environment; and providing assurance to reduce cancelled operations remain top quality priorities for the coming year.
Organisational development and enablers The Trust’s strategic ambitions for quality will be supported and achieved through our new comprehensive Organisational Development (OD) strategy.
We’ve been busy - vital statistics for 2010/11
- Total number of attendances 960,921
- Outpatient attendances 592,958
- A&E patients, including those attending the walk-in centre 195,718
- Inpatient and day-case admissions 98,431
- Number of short-stay patients (under 23 hours) 73,814
- Babies delivered 4,612, including 396 at the Barkantine Birth Centre
- Patients treated in an emergency for a heart attack 637
- Other heart operations and procedures 7,940
- X-rays and scans carried out 378,783
- Kidneys transplanted 112
- Pathology tests 7.9 million
- Surplus on income and expenditure account £6 million
- Number of staff employed by the Trust and our partners 8,750
- Meals served to patients 1,046,881
- Incidents respnded to by Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS), 2,126
- 900,000 visits to the Barts and The London website