Our strategy to 2030
Our organisation
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Our places
- Guy's Hospital
- St Thomas' Hospital
- Evelina London Children's Hospital
- Royal Brompton Hospital
- Harefield Hospital
- Community services in Lambeth and Southwark
From our 5 main hospitals, and in the community, we provide a full range of lifelong, general and specialist care, as well as clinical research, innovation, education and training
Our people
We’re a diverse and welcoming organisation, and are incredibly proud of our 23,600 staff and the expertise and dedication we show to our patients and each other
Our purpose
To deliver excellent healthcare and improve wellbeing as a local, national and international leader in clinical care, education, research and innovation
Our values
Caring - we put patients first
Ambitious - we innovate and strive for excellence
Inclusive - we respect each other and work collaboratively
Our strategy
Better, faster, fairer healthcare for all
- Delivering healthcare excellence
- Improving the health of our populations
- Valuing all of our people
- Innovating for a better future
- Modernising our infrastructure
Our vision for the future
The NHS is facing the biggest challenge in its history – how to continue to deliver high-quality care against a backdrop of rising demand, increased patient acuity and pressures on workforce and finance, all in a post COVID-19 world.
The NHS is not alone. Most developed health systems are grappling with the same sustainability questions.
Our role at Guy’s and St Thomas’, as a leading NHS organisation, is not only to meet this challenge, but also to provide hope for a better future and to show the way by developing new models of care.
Our purpose is to advance health and wellbeing as local, national and international leaders in clinical care, education, research and innovation.
Our ambitious strategy to 2030 is to deliver better, faster, fairer healthcare for all.
We believe this is both essential and attainable. Essential, because nothing matters more to people than high-quality, reliable healthcare when they need it most. Attainable, because of the quality of our people and the calibre of our science.
We are based in one of the world’s greatest cities, a place of extraordinary diversity, creativity and dynamism. This is reflected in the wonderfully diverse people who live and work here, whether born and raised locally or welcomed from all parts of the world by fellow Londoners. Many are our patients, visitors, volunteers and, of course, our incredible colleagues.
However, our ambition for the future of healthcare is not based on the skills and dedication of our staff alone, but also on our clear expectation of continuing scientific and technological progress.
Scientific breakthroughs brought the world through the pandemic, with vaccines produced in record time and treatments developed to save millions of lives.
The next decade will see an even faster acceleration in new digital and biomedical advances, presenting incredible opportunities to provide better, faster, fairer healthcare for all.
At Guy’s and St Thomas’, we must harness these technologies to provide care that is more preventative, personalised and precise, and free up the time of our talented people to focus on the inherently human aspects of providing care.
In doing so, we will contribute significantly to both global scientific discovery, translation and adoption, as well as the scientific and economic success of the UK life sciences sector.
This is how we will continuously, productively and sustainably improve the delivery of healthcare within the human and financial resources available to us.
It will also allow us to play our part in the new Government’s commitment to improving the NHS as a service for all, based on need rather than ability to pay; a relentless focus on driving down waiting times; and a renewed commitment to preventing ill health and increasing out-of-hospital care.
We believe that our extraordinary human ingenuity, commitment and compassion, together with medical and technological advances, are the keys to unlocking better, faster, fairer healthcare for all.
Professor Ian Abbs
Chief Executive Officer
Enduring values in a changing world
Since our last strategy was set in 2018, there have been profound changes affecting the NHS and our own organisation, many of which are of a global nature.
Our new values – caring, ambitious, inclusive – are essential to who we are. They were developed through wide engagement and launched with this strategy. They will guide our decisions and behaviours, particularly in times of uncertainty and challenge.
During the pandemic, the NHS proved to be the indispensable backbone of the nation. We are proud that, thanks to the skill and dedication of our expert clinical teams, patients with COVID-19 at our hospitals had among the best survival rates in the country. Our clinician scientists made major contributions to understanding how to treat COVID-19 most effectively.
The longer-term effects of the pandemic will be felt for many years to come. The backlog of care for all other diseases means many patients are waiting too long for urgent and planned care. Waiting times are now our patients’ number one concern, and we are determined to address this.
The pandemic also did much to highlight the inequalities in our society, having a disproportionate impact on people from a global majority background.
The past few years have seen an important focus on ending racism and discrimination. Equality, diversity and inclusion are now firmly embedded in how we approach all of our work.
Record public borrowing to cope with the effects of the pandemic and high interest rates will constrain public spending for several years to come. The NHS cannot expect significant budgetary increases in the coming years. Instead, like other sectors of the economy, we must drive improvements in the quality of care and productivity through technology and innovation.
Together with our partners at King’s College Hospital, we recently launched a new shared electronic health record system, Epic. This integrated digital platform is widely used in many of the most successful healthcare organisations around the world. It will provide significant opportunities for us to transform our services and relationships with our patients during the lifetime of this strategy.
And that is just the start. Around the world we are seeing exponential growth in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in many sectors, including healthcare.
Coinciding with advances in computing, automation and biological sciences, the resulting health and bio- tech revolution offers the promise of fundamental transformations in the future of healthcare.
The impacts of global warming and climate change are increasingly evident to us all. The NHS has a major role to play in the drive to net zero. We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and impact on the environment, and thereby improving population health.
The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) across the country, with a focus on improving population health, quality of care, value for money, equity and staff satisfaction. Guy’s and St Thomas’ is a member of the South East London ICS and an associate member of the North West London ICS.
In 2021, we completed our merger with Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. Combining our clinical and academic strengths, our vision is to deliver world class healthcare and research in heart and lung care. We have laid the foundations, and in the next period will deliver on this promise.
Our organisation
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust is one of the UK’s leading healthcare, research and innovation organisations.
Serving our patients and communities by providing consistently excellent personal care is at the heart of everything we do.
From our 5 hospitals, in the community and in partnership with others, we offer a comprehensive and lifelong range of general and specialist care of the highest quality.
Through leading clinical academic research, innovation, and training, we are developing the staff, clinicians and treatments of tomorrow.
We are dedicated to diversity, inclusion and opportunity. And we are ambitious for the future of healthcare.
Our merger in 2021 brought together some of London’s most renowned hospitals and services, with the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals joining Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London and our community services.
Our clinical services, health research, education, training and innovation are delivered by a workforce of 23,600 people, including some of the best clinicians and researchers in the country.
We provide a unique and comprehensive range of services, from local and community care for people in Lambeth and Southwark to the most highly-specialist and globally-leading care, research and innovation for people across London, southern England and beyond.
Our main hospital sites stretch from central London to the outer regions of the capital.
How we are organised
Due to the size of our organisation, we are organised into 4 large service-based operating units, called clinical groups. These are:
- Cancer and Surgery
- Evelina London Women’s and Children’s
- Heart, Lung and Critical Care
- Integrated and Specialist Medicine
The clinical groups have responsibility for operational leadership and delivery of Trust strategy in their areas. Each clinical group has an executive team, which is supported by an advisory board that includes non-executive representation, and has the staff and budget akin to a large hospital trust, working across multiple sites.
Individual clinical group strategies, tailored to their services and areas of specialisation, and aligned with the priorities in this strategy, are summarised later in this document. They are supported by our Essentia delivery group which provides a wide range of non-clinical support services.
Education and training
At our world-famous teaching hospitals we train the doctors, nurses, midwives, allied health professionals, dentists and scientists of the future.
At any time, we can have over 500 doctors in training; 1,000 nursing and midwifery students in clinical placements; and, over the course of the year, support 1,100 allied health professional students.
We are the largest dental teaching hospital in Europe, and 1 in 5 of all UK-educated dentists train with us.
Across King’s Health Partners, we bring together more than 46,000 NHS colleagues with 31,00 students.
Our locations
Royal Brompton Hospital is in the heart of Chelsea and provides specialist adult cardiology, cardiac, critical care and respiratory services for adults and children, and children’s interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery. It is located near to the Royal Marsden Hospital with whom we work closely.
Harefield Hospital is located in the outer London borough of Hillingdon. As part of a full range of cardiology and cardiac services, the hospital hosts a heart attack centre serving north west London and provides heart and lung transplant services.
St Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth, occupies a prominent site by Westminster Bridge, opposite the Houses of Parliament. The hospital provides a range of urgent and emergency care including one of the busiest Emergency Departments in the country. A wide range of specialties on site include cardiovascular, respiratory, maternity and women’s care, elderly care, gastro-intestinal services, plastic surgery and ophthalmology. The site hosts advanced diagnostic services supporting diverse clinical and research services.
Evelina London Children’s Hospital at our St Thomas’ site is a purpose-built facility providing an extensive range of local and specialist services, including cardio-respiratory and intensive care, surgery and anaesthesia, neonatology and medical services. Teams work closely with those at Royal Brompton Hospital and in the community.
Guy’s Hospital by London Bridge hosts the comprehensive Guy’s Cancer Centre and the largest dental school in Europe. The site is a hub for renal, urology and orthopaedic services, including complex surgery and many specialist services.
Community services
We provide adult and children’s community health services for local people across Lambeth and Southwark and some locations in Lewisham in:
- 17 community health centres
- GP practices, schools and patients’ homes
We also provide services at other hospital sites across south London, such as Queen Mary’s Sidcup, and across a broad geography through an extensive range of outpatient services in local hospitals across south east England and beyond.
Wimpole Street
Wimpole Street in the heart of Marylebone provides dedicated outpatient and diagnostic facilities for our private patients.
Key facts
23,600
colleagues, making us one of the largest employers in the NHS
2.8 million
patient contacts a year, including:
- 1.73 million outpatients
- 89,000 inpatients
- 94,000 day cases
- 210,000 A&E attendances
- 641,000 contacts in the community
- 6,500 babies delivered
We consistently report one of the lowest mortality rates n the NHS
1,550
beds across our hospital, including 32 beds in the community and more than 170 places in our virtual wards that support patients in community settings such as their own homes
4,000
apprentices, undergraduates and postgraduates, making us one of the largest centres for healthcare education in Europe
1.2 million
telephone calls received every year
6.5 million
medical instruments processed by our sterile services team every year
15,800
participants recruited into 394 non-commercial and the 109 commercial studies in 2023/24 - the ninth highest recruitment across 220 trusts nationally
£2.9 billion
annual turnover, and 43% (£927 million) of our clinical income comes from specialist services
£266 million
capital investment to improve our buildings facilities and equipment over the past 5 years, including our new electronic health record system
36
scanners, including 20 MRI, 14 CT and 2 PET, with access to a further 8 MRI scanners owned by our partners at King's College London
64
operating theatres across our main hospital sites
240,000
journeys a year provided by our transport service
1.5 million
meals served every year to our patients and staff
All facts are based on 2023/24 data and correct at the time of publication. Most are annual, and they may have been rounded up or down.
Working with our partners
We deliver much of our clinical, research, education and innovation with a range of partners. This enables us to leverage our joint expertise and experience, and make best use of our collective infrastructure and assets for the benefit of patients.
We know that partnership working is crucial to the continued success and sustainability of the NHS. We are committed to being a strong and supportive partner to those we work with in our local healthcare system and beyond.
Our most important partners are the patients and public we serve and work with. Each patient is a critical partner in their health, and with tools like MyChart, we will strengthen their ownership of their care. Understanding the experience of patients and communities is fundamental to how we deliver and improve services.
We are part of the South East London Integrated Care System and also work with the North West London Integrated Care System via our Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals.
We have close relationships with many other NHS providers. We work with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust as part of the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative which enables us to plan, co-ordinate and deliver services jointly.
We are founding partners of Lambeth Together and Partnership Southwark for our communities local to Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. We work with primary care, local councils and voluntary and community sectors in these neighbourhoods.
Understanding the experience of patients and communities is fundamental to how we deliver and improve services.
Our partnership with local primary care partners is critical to the health of our patients and a sustainable local health system. We are working together to improve the way patients move between the Trust and primary care. We are looking to make some of our infrastructure and support services available to primary care, and identifying where we can work together to transform ambulatory care and further develop integrated neighbourhood teams.
We have many close, highly collaborative links with academia. King’s Health Partners is our Academic Health Sciences Centre, which includes King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts and King’s College London. Our work as part of King’s Health Partners is driving progress in personalised health, health data and population health.
We also work closely with Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare Partners which includes 3 universities and 5 NHS hospital groups in north west London.
Working with King’s College London, London South Bank University, University of Greenwich, Brunel University and Coventry University, we are one of the largest healthcare educators in Europe.
We have a strategic partnership with Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, aligning our ambitions to support local communities, and to secure inward investment for life sciences and developments that will benefit patients and staff.
Working together, we fundraise, and we receive support through our 3 charities – Guy’s Cancer Charity, Evelina London Children’s Charity and Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity. This helps us to deliver clinical innovation for our patients, improve the wellbeing of staff and accelerate our work on equality, diversity and inclusion.
For heart and lung care, we are also supported by Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity.
Our Synnovis partnership between SYNLAB, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts brings together clinical, scientific and operational expertise to provide pathology services to our trusts and to services across south east London.
We are leaders and members of a number of clinical networks for specialist adult and children’s services for patients in south east and north west London, southern England and further afield reflecting the geographical reach of our specialist services. This includes the South East London Cancer Alliance and Royal Marsden Partners West London Cancer Alliance.
As strategic developments arise we are building new collaborations so we can work jointly on service changes. This will include collaborating with The Royal Marsden and other key providers on the children’s cancer Principal Treatment Centre, and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to provide the NHS Children and Young People’s Gender Service in London.
Our scale and reach attracts many industry collaborations where we work together in fields including new digital innovations, advances in genetics and genomics, advanced therapeutics and medical imaging as well as finding new ways to improve NHS services.
As a leading voice in healthcare, the Trust has several important partnerships with regional and national bodies, as well as government and other NHS trusts. This includes representative bodies like NHS Confederation, NHS Providers, the Shelford Group and the Children’s Hospital Alliance.
Working in a mutually supportive way with all our partners will be an essential factor in how we deliver a world-class health system, which is fit for the future.
Engagement while developing our strategy
We have undertaken extensive engagement over the past 18 months so that our strategy reflects what matters to the people who use our services, colleagues, leaders, governors and partners.
Engagement has consisted of patient and staff surveys, in-person stalls, drop-in and online sessions, group and individual discussions and all-staff briefings. We designed the engagement to ensure we heard a wide range of voices, including targeted engagement with under represented groups.
We engaged with:
750 patients, members of the local community and our governors
700 colleagues, including 200 leaders
our partners, including King’s College Hospital, South London and Maudsley, Lewisham and Greenwich, St George’s, South East London Integrated Care System, King’s Health Partners, King’s College London, Imperial College Health Partners, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity, our pathology partner Synnovis, Lambeth and Southwark councils, Partnership Southwark, Lambeth Together and local primary care representatives
we spoke to patients, the public and colleagues at all our main hospital sites, as well as at Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup, in a number of community sites, and at our Great Dover Street and York Road offices. We also held online engagement sessions
We heard:
people want us to be ambitious, inspiring and looking to the future
in a challenging environment, they also want us to continue to ‘get the basics right’, delivering safe and effective care in a timely way and with reliable physical and digital infrastructure
they want us to be at the leading edge of the future of healthcare. This includes finding new ways to scale innovation, increasing staff and patient participation in research, utilising the opportunities of Epic and MyChart and improving our use of data and analytics
patients and the public told us that reducing waiting times and removing barriers to accessing services is their top priority
they want communications and coordinated care to be priorities so it is easy to speak to the right person, services work well together, people receive the right support and they can contact us in a variety of ways that suit their preferences
patients, the public and our staff want us to focus more on helping people to be healthier by focusing on prevention, more joined up services and working with primary care
staff and governors told us we must continue to realise the benefits of the merger with Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals
staff want to be listened to, to learn from each other, to develop and implement plans inclusively and feel part of ‘one Guy’s and St Thomas’ – across all our locations and places of work
people consistently reinforced that partnership working is essential to address shared issues, including waiting times, workforce and financial challenges
our partners acknowledged our respective roles, and opportunities to work together, as ‘anchor organisations’, including to reduce our environmental impact, spend locally where appropriate and to widen access to local employment
Our new electronic
health record
Epic is the name of our comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) system.
Launched in October 2023 across Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, and our pathology provider Synnovis, Epic has created a single electronic patient record system used by over 40,000 colleagues across multiple hospital and community sites. It has integrated multiple IT systems into a single health record that provides a comprehensive overview of an individual’s care, freeing up clinical time whilst also improving safety and efficiency.
The launch of Epic also saw the introduction of MyChart, a new app and online service that puts information about their own care in the hands of patients. MyChart allows patients to securely and easily access their health record, giving them more control and involvement in their care.
Realising the benefits of Epic
This was the biggest ever single go-live of Epic’s electronic patient record anywhere in the world. We will concentrate on rapidly delivering the benefits of the system for our patients and staff. We will use Epic to drive more integrated, data-enabled care across all our services, resulting in improved outcomes and new opportunities for research.
Optimising the system and how we use it will standardise care pathways, deliver operational and financial efficiencies, and support stronger collaborative working with our system partners:
better coordination will reduce the risk of errors or omissions in patient care, primarily by ensuring all relevant information is accessible in one place
automated alerts and reminders will improve safety by ensuring timely interventions and enhanced management of chronic conditions
real-time information will allow clinicians and patients to access up-to-date patient records, lab results, scans and other critical information, supporting informed and timely decisions
integrating data will provide a comprehensive health record that allows a holistic view of the patient’s medical history and current health status
more efficient processes will reduce paperwork and manual data entry, while workflow improvements will support more efficient scheduling and coding, reduce administrative burden and drive operational and financial efficiency
communication will be transformed between services, clinical teams and patients, leading to more joined-up care. MyChart will give patients easy access to information about their healthcare and enable them to communicate with their care team and manage appointments
advanced analytics will enable in-depth analysis of clinical data, feeding into research, innovation and improved care based on identified trends and measured outcomes
the system will also support population health initiatives by enabling the analysis of data at an aggregate level. This will help us better identify at-risk groups, plan interventions and tackle health inequalities
clinical research will benefit from better data, supporting a wide range of research and clinical studies that aim to improve treatment and outcomes
colleagues and students will receive ongoing training and support, learning new skills and benefiting from state-of-the-art technology which will transform the workplace
We will embed Epic in ways that ensure it is set up for success: ensuring reliable performance; accurate data entry; excellent technical and analytics support; and high-quality training for our people.
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