Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust


The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is an NHS foundation trust, and is responsible for the management of the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, Berkshire, the Prince Charles Eye Unit and the Windsor Dialysis Unit based in Windsor, Berkshire, Bracknell Healthspace, Townlands Hospital in Henley-on-Thames and West Berkshire Community Hospital which is between Newbury and Thatcham.

Development

In 2008 the trust established a subsidiary company, Healthcare Facilities Management Services Ltd, to run two new health centres in Bracknell and Reading. The intention was to achieve VAT benefits, as well as pay bill savings, by recruiting new staff on less expensive non-NHS contracts. VAT benefits arise because NHS trusts can only claim VAT back on a small subset of goods and services they buy. The Value Added Tax Act 1994 provides a mechanism through which NHS trusts can qualify for refunds on contracted out services.
The trust's plans to build a pre-operative assessment block in Reading were approved by Reading Borough Council in March 2015 but councillors complained that the car parking site was "abominably managed".
In 2020 the trust made a deal with Babylon Health to use their Ask A&E triage tool for a year. A longer-term partnership is under consideration.

Performance

The Trust established a Hospital at Home service in 2015. Suitable patients are taken home, where a nurse will agree a care plan tailored to their condition. The average length of "stay" on the home care scheme between three and four days for each patient. It is anticipated that up to 1,600 people in West Berkshire each year would use the scheme.
In the End of Life Care Audit - Dying in Hospital carried out by the Royal College of Physicians in 2016, the Trust did well, with scores between 82% and 96% across the five indicators, while the national average was between 56% and 84%.