Locals needing emergency surgery can expect to benefit from more efficient assessment and treatment thanks to the opening a dedicated area at Good Hope Hospital, the Surgical Assessment Unit (SAU).

Needing emergency surgery can be stressful and daunting, but those patients coming to the SAU can be reassured that they will receive all the care they need in one place.  Based on ward 17 and comprising  15 short-stay beds and four male and four female assessment bays; the new facility will enable assessments to be made quicker and earlier.  Decisions about short or longer term treatment and when it is time to go home after treatment will also be made more promptly.

Good Hope managing director, Richard Parker, said: “This service is a step forward in further improving the quality of care that we provide to our patients.

“Opening this new Unit will ensure that patients referred by their GP and requiring emergency surgery will be provided with a safer and more prompt care, whilst relieving congestion in the Accident and Emergency department.”

Specifically, I would like to know how much income did the Heart Of England NHS Foundation Trust receive in private patient income in the financial years 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14, excluding income from overseas patients?

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  The response to your query is detailed below:

Our information on staff assaults comes from our incident reporting software package called Datix which is used across our various sites.  When reporting an incident, it is not a required field to state job title and many of those who reported staff assaults throughout the time period you refer to, have not.  Please be aware that it is possible that some incidents may have been reported more than once, this is why we have attached both a person numbers and incident numbers table.

Whilst we have been able to state where the incident took place, we have not been able to accurately report those who took time off work.  Not all colleagues who require time off work involve our occupational health service.

I would like to find out the number of  never event incidents that have taken place in your hospital that involve ‘retained surgical items’.

How many non-event incidents that specifically relate to ‘retained surgical instruments / items’ have occurred at your Hospital Trust during each of the following years: 2011/2012, 2012/2013, 2013/2014.

For each incident recorded please include the following information:

I)             The surgical procedure being carried out

II)           The item that was retained in the body

III)         Details of any recorded impact on the patients’ health: e.g infection, damage to internal organs, deterioration in condition etc.

See attached spreadsheetFreedom of Information Request 3172

The response to your query is detailed below:

1. Total amount the Trust spent on agency locum doctors 2013/2014 (April – March)
2. For this information to be broken down by specialty and grade.

Part 1: Did your trust submit a bid to the Technology Fund?

We submitted 5 bids.

Part 2:Please provide your trust’s bid documents.  

Please note the content was submitted by a portal that is rather difficult so the attached document represent the content,

but not the format.

Part 3: Please also provide answers to the following questions in the space provided.

Please see attached table FOI 3109 Explanation and embedded bids with embedded copies of the bids.

Part 4: Does your trust have a plan to have a fully operational electronic patient record?

The trust was required by NHS England to complete the plan by April 2014.

“We already have many elements of a full EPR and are drafting plans this year in order to deliver a fully operational EPR.”

If the trust has a plan, please provide the plan.

“We expect our plan to be ready by the end of this year.”

A Heartlands Hospital consultant physician has been named as one of the top ten diabetes researchers around the globe.

Professor Anthony Barnett is the only Brit named in the first ten of the World’s top doctors in the research and treatment of type 2 diabetes announced this week by expert ranking index, Expertscape.

The Professor has earned the acclaimed title of top researcher through publishing over 650 papers spanning 35 years of his career as a consultant at Heartlands Hospital, which houses one of the biggest diabetes units in the UK and as an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at The University of Birmingham.  Now semi-retired, Prof Barnett has major research interests in the genetics of diabetes and its complications, new drugs and use of new therapies for diabetes and health service related issues, including provision of diabetes care in the South Asian population.

Professor Barnett said: “When I started researching the causes of diabetes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, little was known about the condition.  A highlight during my career for me was to be among the first to develop a genetic map for the location of genes for type 1 diabetes in the 1980s.  Research that has enabled us to have a better understanding of the characteristics of type 1 diabetes,  the causes of type 2 diabetes and how complications develop have also been highlights for me.

“I’m surprised but pleased to have been named among the top ten diabetes researchers in the world.  We produce high quality diabetes research in the UK so it’s great for this to be recognised.  None of this could have been achieved without the support of all of the team I work with including the scientists, consultants, research nurses and researchers at Heartlands and the University of Birmingham.”

Clinical director for diabetes at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, Dr Srikanth Bellary, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for Professor Barnett and for the Trust.  The Professor and team have made significant contributions to diabetes care in the region and lead the way nationally in providing high quality diabetes services.”

The Expertscape list was compiled by ranking experts who have published the highest number of diabetes research articles that rank among those most frequently cited by fellow researchers, earning them the mark of exceptional impact.

I attach our uniform policy Uniform and Dress Code Policy v2.0 which on page 9 has a description of the 15 different uniforms our nurses and Health Care Assistants use and the job titles/bands that would use those uniforms.  The largest group of nurses are graded Band 5 and are called Staff nurses.

You asked about design costs.  In 2009 we started using our own Trust branding on our uniforms.  It is a small white stitched emblem with Heart of England on it with the large H.  If you look at our front page https://hgs.uhb.nhs.uk/ you will see it top left, just to the right of the NHS logo.  This branding has been in place since 2009 and is on our letter heads, uniforms and fleet across the Trust.  Any uniforms we order these days are a standard specification with the logo added.  In light of this, our expenditure on design since 2010/11 on uniforms has been nil.

This is a freedom of information request relating to spending by Heart Of England NHS Foundation Trust on pornography, to aid men providing sperm samples.

For each of the last two years for which data is available (ie broken down into an annual basis), please tell me how much Heart Of England NHS Foundation Trust has spent on pornography. Please also supply me with a list of companies from which pornography has been procured, and levels of spending with each company. If possible, please break down this spending between printed material and video material. If possible, please also provide me with the names of any magazines or videos/DVDs that have been purchased.

We do not take sperm samples at any of our hospitals and therefore we do not purchase pornography to aid this.

The response to your query is detailed below:  We have been unable to identify first line patients.

Within your organisation how many patients are currently being treated for head and neck cancer (Squamous cell carcinoma) ?

We are unable to divide drug used by patient condition.