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Queen Mary's Hospital | ||
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust was formed in 1994 as Bexley Community Trust. It took the name Oxleas in 1995, after the ancient Oxleas Woods between Bexley and Greenwich. It became an NHS Foundation Trust in 2006.
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Current status
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust is an NHS Foundation Trust providing community health, mental health and learning disability services primarily to the London Boroughs of Bromley, Greenwich and Bexley. The trust provides additional specialist forensic psychiatric services to people from Lewisham as well as its core areas and healthcare services to prisons in Kent.
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust headquarters are at Dartford and in-patient services are located at the campuses of Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup; Princess Royal University Hospital, Farnborough, Kent and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. Forensic in-patient services are concentrated at the Bracton Centre in Dartford. Memorial Hospital is a hospital owned by Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust. Oxleas operates several facilities including inpatient services for elderly people. There is also a large community outreach service network so that people can live at home and be helped both in their own homes, and as outpatients at various locations where Oxleas staff help their patients.
Oxleas took over the running of Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup on 1 October 2013 and is investing up to £30million to develop the facilities at the hospital.
Background to Oxleas taking over Queen Mary's Hospital
South London Healthcare NHS Trust (the previous owners of Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup; Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich; and Princess Royal University Hospital, Farnborough, Kent) had a symbiotic relationship with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust.
In 2012, the Special Administrator, Matthew Kershaw of the Department of Health, was requested by the Secretary of State for Health to investigate concerns that South London Healthcare NHS Trust was not a viable concern. After public consultation and much investigation, it was declared on 31 January 2013 that the South London Healthcare NHS Trust would be disbanded. This has led to action in the High Court.
There is still much debate going on about whether this will improve health care in South London and questions have been asked in Parliament as to the wisdom of reorganising so many health trusts on account of one hospital trust being disbanded. Caroline Taylor has taken over as Special Administrator of South London Healthcare NHS Trust.
Council of Governors
Oxleas has a Governing body, a Council of Governors. They hold quarterly Council meetings and publish their Agenda and Minutes on their website for everyone to read. The latest details of the Governing Board meetings on the Oxleas NHS Foundation website is for September 2012. Oxleas publishes the Agenda and Minutes of the Council of Governors. Richard Diment, elected governor in September 2012, has an official blog for the trust in which he has made comments upon the Mid-Staffordshire Inquiry Report
Controversies
In 2011 a murder was committed by a patient who had left one of the trust's facilities after being taken there by police. The family of the victim have launched legal proceedings. In June 2013 the trust faced a further legal challenge after the death by suicide of a patient at its Green Park House facility.
Performance
It was named by the Health Service Journal as the second best mental health trust to work for in 2015. At that time it had 3071 full time equivalent staff and a sickness absence rate of 4.38%. 74% of staff recommend it as a place for treatment and 74% recommended it as a place to work.
The trust broke from the national pay agreement in August 2015 by giving a 1% pay rise to its senior non-clinical staff - those earning above £57,069 - in line with the award for the rest of the staff.
In March 2016 the Trust was ranked second in the Learning from Mistakes League.