16 December 2014

As we near the end of 2014, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all staff and stakeholders for your ongoing commitment to achieving positive outcomes for our local communities through partnership working. It has been a challenging year in many ways for the health and academic sectors. Despite this, we have been able to continue to deliver a wide range of successes, and this is only possible because of the ongoing support from colleagues right across King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital, South London and Maudsley and partners across south London and beyond.

We have achieved a lot for our patients and service users over the last year, and this is tribute to all staff, from frontline nurses and doctors to clinical academics, service managers, support staff and senior leaders, for your consistent hard work and dedication.



Earlier this year, King’s Health Partners was accredited as an Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) for the second time by the Department of Health, one of only six in England. Whilst this may not sound as glamorous as some of our other achievements during the year, it gave us the crucial opportunity to set out our priorities for the next five years which are now central to everything that we do as a partnership.



Building on these priorities, the range and diversity of outstanding research, education and clinical services which we have delivered in 2014 is something we should all take great pride in. I would like to use this chance to briefly remind you of a few of the highlights of 2014. 



Awards: Staff and teams from across King’s Health Partners have been recognised with a huge variety of awards during the year, including from the HSJ, Nursing Times and the BMA and through numerous appearances in ‘top 100’ lists such as HSJ’s top Clinical Leaders, Innovators, BME Pioneers and Women. Congratulations once again to all, including all those nominated and shortlisted. 



Global health: Our King’s Health Partners team in Sierra Leone continue to play a central role responding to the Ebola outbreak, supported by colleagues in London. I am sure you are all very proud of what they are doing and I would ask you to particularly remember them at this time of year as they continue their extraordinary work.



Joining up care: we are very proud to have SLaM and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at the heart of our partnership and we have delivered some truly innovative work to join up mental and physical health over the last 12 months, for example through the IMPARTs (Integrating Mental and Physical Healthcare Research Training and Services) and 3 Dimensions of Care for Diabetes (3DfD) programmes. We have also launched KHP Online, a fantastic achievement which allows clinical staff from our three trusts to view the mental and physical care a patient or service user has received in one of our other trusts. We also continue to work with our primary care and local authority colleagues across south east London to better join up care across all settings for local people.



Research and education: our University partner has risen to 16th in the world in the QS World University Rankings and is now ranked 11th worldwide in the ‘clinical, pre-clinical and health’ category by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. We are also delighted to announce that King's College London ranks third in the Research Excellence Framework for research in clinical medicine and second for the power of our research in psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience - a fantastic achievement. King’s has also received a number of further Athena Swan awards for our work to advance equality and the representation of women in scientific careers, a tribute to the hard work of all staff during a challenging year and recognition of the academic strength at the heart of our AHSC. Our NIHR Biomedical Research Centres at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and South London and Maudsley continue to carry out cutting edge translational research to transform scientific breakthroughs in physical and mental health into new treatments for patients and service users. Our new Clinical Research Facility on our Denmark Hill campus, officially opened this year by Chief Medical Officer Professor Dame Sally Davies, is the first of its kind in the world because it has been built with mental health research in mind.



Improving outcomes: we have now published the first five of our pioneering series of outcome books. By being transparent about the outcomes we are achieving for our patients and service users right across our partnership, we are looking to continuously drive up the quality and value of the care we provide.



Improving public health in our local community: we are committed to tackling health inequalities and supporting people to make healthy lifestyle choices and it was a tremendous achievement when SLaM became the first of our partner organisations to go completely smoke-free across all its sites in October, leading the way not just across King’s Health Partners but setting an example for the whole local community. In September, ourPathway Homeless Team was shortlisted for a Nursing Times Award in recognition of their success in providing co-ordinated healthcare for local homeless people.

People: we have seen many new faces join our partnership this year. The King’s Health Partners Board welcomed Prof Ed Byrne, the new Principal of King’s College London, as its new Chair, as well as two new non-executive directors – Steven Dorrell MP, who is a previous Secretary of State for Health, and Professor Garret FitzGerald, Director of Translational Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. We’ve also appointed several new leaders to our clinical academic groups (CAGs) to help us drive improvements in all clinical specialties.

Looking ahead to 2015, my ambition is that we continue to demonstrate and deliver excellence right across King’s Health Partners and focus on those areas where we feel our combined strength makes us best placed to deliver world class clinical care, education and research. I look forward to working closely with stakeholders and partners across south London to build on the achievements of 2014. 

I hope that you have an enjoyable and relaxing holiday period.

Robert

Professor Sir Robert Lechler

Executive Director, King's Health Partners