Season's greetings!

The forthcoming new year is an opportunity to reflect on the past one – and what a busy one it was! We celebrated winning many national awards (again) and saw our successful virtual hospital model go from strength to strength.

We’ve also continued to roll out new digital healthcare technology to help our staff and colleagues in partner organisations have instant access to an ever-wider range of patient records and information in order to deliver joined up, high-quality care.

Whilst there were no big announcements nationally about the New Hospital Programme (NHP), there was a lot of activity in the NHP team and here at the trust to keep plans moving.

We had great news about funding for a new pathology and mortuary building at Watford which will be relocated to a different part of the site. This is a big step forward as it will free up land which is vital to our redevelopment plans. You can read more about this below.

Another highlight of 2022 was the opening of the multi-storey car park at Watford General in May. We have had a lot of positive feedback from visitors about the pay-on-exit technology. In 2023, a new coffee shop (Peabody’s) will open in the car park, meaning that staff, visitors and patients can grab a drink and a snack as they arrive at or leave the hospital.

We have rolled out our virtual hospital to more patients over the year as we have expanded this model to respiratory and heart failure patients. A short (3 minute) film here provides more detail.

And, we were the first NHS trust in the country to install two Versius robots to assist with surgical operations. Performing robotic-assisted surgery brings major benefits to patients including reduced post-operative pain and a faster recovery which leads to earlier discharge from hospital. Additionally, the opening of our new Theatre 5 earlier this month will play a key part in reducing the waiting time for patients requiring surgical procedures.

In 2022 we welcomed local and national politicians and NHP colleagues to our Watford site to describe our plans, with the benefit of being able to see the land earmarked for the new hospital. This has been very useful for all and has provided us with more insight into the latest thinking around the NHP’s approaches to design and procurement. We have been able to demonstrate how our design templates for wards and other clinical areas could easily be adopted by others in the NHP.

We were also thrilled to have encouraging news about funding to significantly upgrade our diagnostic facilities in St Albans City Hospital.

In 2023 we look forward to bringing you updates on changes to all three of our hospital sites and the services we provide. Our aim is always to ensure that our services continue to transform and lead the design of new and refurbished buildings.

Finally, we would like to thank all of our staff and volunteers for their hard work this year, especially over the festive period.

We wish you a Happy New Year and all the best for 2023!