Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is an English teaching hospital and part of the

Shelford Group The Shelford Group is a collaboration of ten of the largest teaching and research NHS hospital trusts in England. The ten members collectively employ over 140,000 people and account for over £12.5 billion of the NHS budget. The member organisat ...

. It is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals and one of the largest hospitals in Europe. The trust is made up of four hospitals – the

John Radcliffe Hospital The John Radcliffe Hospital (informally known as the JR) is a large tertiary teaching hospital in Oxford, England. It forms part of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is named after John Radcliffe, an 18th-century physic ...

(which includes the Children's Hospital, West Wing, Eye Hospital, Heart Centre and Women's Centre), the Churchill Hospital and the

Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre The Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (NOC) is an internationally renowned orthopaedic hospital, with strong affiliations to the University of Oxford. It provides routine and specialist orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery and rheumatology services t ...

, all located in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, and the

Horton General Hospital The Horton General Hospital is a National Health Service hospital located on the Oxford Road, in the Calthorpe ward of Banbury. It is managed by Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. History Pre-1948 The earliest part of the hospita ...

Banbury Banbury is a historic market town on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. It had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census. Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding area of north Oxfordshir ...

, north Oxfordshire. As well as the four main hospitals, the trust also provides services in four

community hospital A community hospital can be purely a nominal designation or have a more specific meaning. When specific, it refers to a hospital that is accessible to the general public, and provides a general or specific medical care which is usually short-term, ...

s across Oxfordshire including Thame, Wallingford, Wantage and Witney. The services offered at these community hospitals are fairly basic and differ from hospital to hospital. Wantage community hospital is also accompanied by Wantage health centre whereby additional health services are provided by the trust. Other clinics and health centres serviced by the trust in Oxfordshire includes Bicester and Oxford with the trust also providing some services in clinics and hospitals in neighbouring counties.

History

The trust was formed in 2011 by a merger with the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust. It achieved

foundation trust A foundation trust is a semi-autonomous organisational unit within the National Health Service in England. They have a degree of independence from the Department of Health and Social Care (and, until the abolition of SHAs in 2013, their local s ...

status in October 2015. Sir

Jonathan Michael Sir Jonathan Michael is a British nephrologist and medical executive. From 2000 to 2007, he was the chief executive of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust where he received his medical training, qualifying in 1970, before his 20-year career as a clini ...

, then chief executive, announced in November 2014 that he planned to retire in 2015 – by which time it was hoped that the trust would achieve foundation trust status. The trust is to set up an independent business subsidiary in London in partnership with the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and Mayo Clinic in 2019.

Services

The trust has one of the 11 Genomics Medicines Centres associated with

Genomics England Genomics England is a British company set up and owned by the United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care to run the 100,000 Genomes Project. The project aimed in 2014 to sequence 100,000 genomes from NHS patients with a rare disease a ...

which will open across England in February 2014. All the data produced in the 100,000 Genomes project will be made available to drugs companies and researchers to help them create precision drugs for future generations. Part of the trust's former

Littlemore Hospital Littlemore Hospital was a mental health facility on Sandford Road in Littlemore, Oxfordshire. History The hospital, which was designed by Robert Clarke using a Corridor Plan layout, opened as the Oxford County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in August 1846 ...

site is to be developed for housing. It is one of the biggest provider of specialised services in England, which generated an income of £356 million in 2014/5. In 2019 NHS England planned to remove the contract for

PET-CT Positron emission tomography–computed tomography (better known as PET-CT or PET/CT) is a nuclear medicine technique which combines, in a single gantry, a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner and an x-ray computed tomography (CT) scan ...

scanning from the trust's Churchill Hospital and award it to a private contractor, InHealth. This was opposed by local MPs, and 10,000 people signed a petition against the move, saying it could produce an inferior service. Through its solicitors the NHS then threatened to sue the trust if it sided with opponents of the plan. The trust then intended to appeal against the decision but backed down after a phone call from NHS England's chairman. NHS England subsequently changed its mind, and agreed that the scanners would stay in the hospital, but InHealth was given the contract to provide the service.

Performance

In September 2016, the trust was selected by NHS England as one of twelve

Global Digital Exemplar The Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) programme is an NHS England initiative to achieve digital transformation in selected exemplar organisations and to create a knowledge sharing ecosystem to spread learning from these exemplars. The programme is to ...

s. The trust halved the number patients medically fit for discharge but stuck in acute beds between January and June 2016 by employing 60 social care workers to provide support in patients' homes after discharge. In June 2019 the

Care Quality Commission The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care of the United Kingdom. It was established in 2009 to regulate and inspect health and social care services in England. I ...

downgraded the trust's rating from “good” to “requires improvement” because “Across

’s wards and in the main theatres the state and repair of the walls, floors, doors and work surfaces were such that adequate cleaning could not always be assured.” There were other problems affecting infection control in the operating theatres.

Staffing

In September 2018 the chief executive, Bruno Holthof, reported that the trust had about 450 nursing vacancies, because of the effect of Brexit and the high cost of living in the area, and had to close beds as a result. There were 3,210 nurses and health visitors employed in June 2018.

References

External links