St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust


St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was formed in 1991, and is based in Whiston, Merseyside.
It runs two hospitals:
In 2012 the trust's bid for NHS Foundation Trust status was “escalated” for Department of Health scrutiny, after a series of issues.

PFI

The trust has a substantial Private Finance Initiative contract. Innisfree Ltd, Vinci SA. Medirest and GE are the partners. The 35 year PFI contract is delivered by NewHospitals, a Special Purpose Company formed by Taylor Woodrow and Innisfree.

Primary Care

The trust took over Marshalls Cross Medical Centre in 2017 and plans to take over five more general practices in St Helens.

Information technology

The trust was an early adopter of Electronic health records and in 2010 it was the first trust to stop using paper medical records in clinical practice.
It was also an early adopter of Electronic Staff Records after it became the lead employer for approximately 2,300 junior doctors on the Cheshire and Merseyside Deanery programme.

Performance

The trust did very well in the 2014 cancer patient experience survey and has agreed to pair up with Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which did badly, in a scheme intended to “spread and accelerate innovative practice via peer to peer support and learning”.
It was named by the Health Service Journal as one of the top hundred National Health Service trusts to work for in 2015. At that time it had 4136 full time equivalent staff and a sickness absence rate of 3.75%. 78% of staff recommend it as a place for treatment and 72% recommended it as a place to work.
After an inspection in August 2015 the trust was one of only three in England rated "outstanding" by the Care Quality Commission. The hospital's outpatient department was said to be "the best we have inspected so far".