Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust launched

To Focus on Community Healthcare

The boroughs of Hounslow and Richmond -upon-Thames have a new NHS trust from this month.

Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust is one of only two NHS trusts in London and 16 in the country solely focused o n community healthcare.

The trust, which is the existing provider of community healthcare in the boroughs, has just over 1,000 staff made up of district nurses, health visitors, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, podiatrists, dietitians and other healthcare professionals, serving a combined population of approximately 400,000.   Staff are based across twenty sites across both boroughs including health clinics, community hospitals and walk-in centres.

Previously the community healthcare services were run by the two primary care trusts, NHS Hounslow and NHS Richmond.  The services merged on 1 April last year and following approval from the Secretary of State for Health, the organisation becomes independent from today.

Chief Executive Richard Tyler said being an NHS trust would bring many benefits for the local communities the trust serves.

“We are at the beginning of an exciting new chapter in community healthcare for Hounslow and Richmond.  Being an NHS Trust will bring us more freedom to shape services and support people outside acute hospital services, building on the good work that has already been achieved in developing high quality services close to people’s homes.

“ Prevention is a strong part of our ethos.  Our primary focus is to provide services that keep people well and out of hospital.”

Chairman Steve Swords said: “Achieving trust status is the result of many years of hard work.  I would like to thank all our staff for their professionalism and commitment and to thank our colleagues at NHS Richmond and NHS Hounslow for their support. We had widespread backing from our two l ocal a uthorities GPs, Local Involvement Networks (LINks) and our other local partners.  We look forward to working even more closely with them to develop better co-ordinated care that is centred on the needs of our patients.”

Richard Tyler added:“The next step for us is to begin preparations to become a Foundation Trust.  As an FT, we will have patients and staff as voting members, making decisions about the direction we take our services in, putting them even further at the heart of what we do.”

April 5, 2011