Excellent care for our patients

We know that being able to diagnose and treat patients quickly has a huge positive impact on their health outcomes and quality of life. In the Big Conversation that informs our new strategy, patients and colleagues said faster access to hospital services was a top priority for them, for their wellbeing and job satisfaction respectively.

Although we are making important progress, we are not yet meeting national standards for access to planned treatment and cancer care. Over the coming years, we will make six important commitments to change that:

1. Making outpatient care more accessible and efficient

We will do this by providing more appointments; modernising our booking systems so patients can initiate follow-ups and choose more convenient virtual or phone appointments; and moving some outpatient services into community settings.

2. Carrying out more operations and procedures

We will do this by providing more day-case surgery in specialties with the longest waiting lists; reducing cancellations by separating planned and emergency care; adopting the best practice of the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme; and prioritising capital investment into expanding, refurbishing and maintaining our operating theatres.

3. Getting patients home faster

We will do this by reducing patients’ average length of stay; expanding six and seven-day services to include pharmacy, therapies and consultant ward rounds; improving discharge coordination with social and voluntary sector partners; and developing innovative programmes to support patients at home.

4. Helping patients stay well while they wait

We will do this by giving patients more guidance and support in managing their condition while they wait and prepare for treatment; doing more pre-operative assessments online; and keeping in closer touch with people on our waiting lists so they can tell us if their condition changes.

5. Developing more alternatives to hospital care

We will do this by working with our local healthcare system partners to improve community services, including mental health provision; streamlining referral processes and enabling GPs to treat more people in the community with better guidance and advice; and improving data sharing to support more personalised care.

6. Modernising our diagnostic and clinical support services

We will do this by investing in new facilities and equipment in our new centres of excellence, including our Community Diagnostic Centre; establishing a rolling equipment upgrade programme; strengthening fragmented support services such as pharmacy, therapies, diagnostics and sterile services; and optimising our medicines use.

Our Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) departments are incredibly busy places, often seeing more than a thousand patients a day. As well as providing life-saving, time-critical care to patients experiencing major trauma, strokes and coronary arrest, they are also the front door to our hospitals for a much wider group of patients and act as a safety net for people who are unable to access the support they need elsewhere in the health system or community.

Most patients are seen and treated within four hours of their arrival, but too many are not. The pressures our UEC services face also mean we are often not able to provide the quality of care we would wish, in either experience or the environment in which patients wait and are treated. This strategy makes four commitments that will help us improve on all fronts:

1. Improving the quality and safety of urgent and emergency care services across the Trust

We will do this by standardising urgent care procedures and pathways; expanding same-day emergency care, including specialist provision for older and frail patients; and upgrading Urgent Treatment Centres (UTC) on all sites to treat less serious cases.

2. Investing in our emergency departments

We will do this by committing £7 million to expanding Worthing Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) and UTC, £4.5 million to a new Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit at St Richard’s, and completing a more than £60 million transformation of the Royal Sussex County Hospital’s ED.

3. Improving patient experience in our emergency departments

We will do this by taking immediate steps to reduce the need for corridor care and to eliminate it by the end of the first year of this strategy; prioritising privacy and dignity in emergency environments; using patient feedback to drive improvement; and improving coordination between our EDs and wards by training staff to be better able to support patients as they move through our hospitals.

4. Supporting the shift in healthcare provision from hospital to community

We will do this by playing our part in creating a joined-up health and care system with integrated urgent care pathways; embedding clinicians in ambulance call hubs to provide paramedics with real-time advice when deciding whether to bring a patient to hospital; and expanding the Hospital Alternative Oversight (HALO) programme, including working with care homes to keep residents out of hospital and providing virtual wards for home-based care.

Our position as a large multi-site trust gives us a unique opportunity to consolidate expertise and resources to deliver outstanding specialist care. Centres of excellence allow us to pool clinical skills, improve outcomes and increase productivity by concentrating services where they can be most effective. This approach is backed by national and international evidence and supports our strategic objective of providing sustainable, high-quality care.

We have already established one centre of excellence by consolidating vital surgical services for colorectal cancer into a single high-volume site at Worthing and are seeing improved outcomes, fewer cancellations and faster access for patients, as well as building staff expertise. Over the next five years we will make five commitments to build on this model:

1. Building a new Sussex Cancer Centre

The new Sussex Cancer Centre in Brighton will serve one of the largest cancer populations in the NHS, treating patients from across Sussex, Kent and beyond. Designed with patients, it will offer cutting-edge treatments, advanced technology, and expanded research capabilities. This centre will transform cancer care across the region, improving access and outcomes.

2. Establishing a new stroke centre of excellence

Opening in 2027 at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, our purpose-built Stroke Centre will deliver high-quality, specialist care for stroke patients. It will bring together expert teams in modern facilities to save lives, improve recovery outcomes and reduce long-term impacts of stroke across Sussex.

3. Developing at least three more centres of excellence by 2030

We will explore opportunities to develop additional centres of excellence at our Southlands and Princess Royal hospitals. These centres will focus on expanding diagnostics and day-case surgery capacity to improve access, reduce waiting times, and ensure sustainable, high-quality care.

4. Providing more specialist care in Sussex

We will do this by expanding our specialist services in key clinical areas such as neurosciences, paediatrics, cancer, and cardiac care. This will allow more patients to receive advanced care in Sussex, reducing their need to travel. The new Louisa Martindale Building will be a dedicated centre for specialist services in Brighton and partner with academic institutions to develop our people’s skills and attract expertise and funding.

5. Investing in improving services

We will invest at least £3 million annually in service transformation across the Trust, prioritising improvements based on patient and clinical input, and focusing on areas with outdated infrastructure or fragile service delivery. This will ensure changes are inclusive and equitable, and that investment makes the biggest difference to those services in need of the greatest support.

Every patient deserves to have the fastest possible access to safe, high-quality care – regardless of who they are, where they live, or which of our hospitals they attend. Yet we know that health inequalities persist across Sussex, and that experiences and outcomes can vary.

So our goal is to embed fairness into every aspect of care – from how services are designed to how patients are treated – so no one is left behind. We are already working towards this objective in population health, through our innovative programmes in Hepatitis C and maternity care, for example. Now we are making three commitments that will take us further again:

1. Providing consistent standards of quality and safety

We will do this by Introducing unified care pathways to remove disparities in access or treatment; expanding our Critical Care Outreach provision; continuing to implement the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) to integrate learning from incidents; and using our Daily Management System on all wards to ensure consistent, basic standards of care and share good practice.

2. Addressing healthcare inequalities

We will do this by  improving our demographic data collection to better understand our patients’ needs and remove barriers to access; monitoring waiting lists for fairness and equity; partnering with community organisations to reach and support marginalised groups; adapting our buildings for accessibility and dementia-friendly design; and promoting digital inclusion and equitable referral pathways.

3. Making the most of the time we spend with patients

We will do this by using every patient interaction to support broader health and wellbeing, discussing lifestyle factors and social circumstances that impact long-term health. This approach will help patients address challenges such as smoking, diet, physical activity, and social isolation. By 2027, we will also ensure 95% of patients with complex needs have a proactive, co-produced care plan that covers both medical and social needs.