About us
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) was founded in 1992 as part of the second wave of NHS Trusts to be established in England, and is the biggest provider of healthcare services in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. We serve around 474,000 residents across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, with the remainder of Cornwall’s population in the east and far north of the county looking to Plymouth and North Devon respectively, for their acute hospital services.
As a year round tourist destination, the number of people we care for is boosted by holidaymakers, which can more than double our population at the busiest times.
Around 6,700 people work together across our hospitals and services, including 400 volunteers and an in-house bank of over 1500 people working flexibly to help us respond to changes in demand.
We operate over three main sites
- Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro – the biggest hospital in Cornwall providing emergency and specialist heatlhcare
- St Michael’s Hopsital in Hayle – providing a range of specialist services
- West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance – offering a wide range of healthcare services including an Urgent Treatment Centre
To improve the sustainability of hospital and healthcare provision in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, RCHT has formed a provider collaborative with Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CFT). As part of this provider collaborative, we have agreed the principles of a ‘One workforce’ approach to facilitate NHS recruitment and retention, support the movement of staff between both organisations, align terms and conditions of employment, and facilitate service transformation across NHS Providers to enable care to be delivered in the most effective and sustainable way. We have also developed an acute provider collaborative with Acute Hospital providers across Devon and Cornwall to support the sustainability of Acute Hospital services across the Devon and Cornwall Peninsula.
Transforming Care through Partnerships
The implementation of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) has created a significant opportunity to further progress the integration of health and care, and to take
strategic actions to address health inequalities in our population. Our ICB has been clear in the strategic intent to progress integration and health equality and has developed a clear strategic plan setting out the opportunities to deliver more care close to home, and to enable significant transformation of the delivery of health and care services to support the long term sustainability of care for patients, residents and communities across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
As an ICB Board we have established one of the first joint system Quality Committees in the country to enable the acceleration and delivery of significant systemwide
quality transformation and improvement. This innovative approach has been established as a formal joint committee of the ICB, RCHT and Cornwall
Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CFT). We have commenced a significant programme of improvement, initially focussed on transforming frailty care, diabetes care, end of life care and other intermediate care services. An example of our joint determination to progress integration and transformation has been the establishment of a community based frailty Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) service at Bodmin Hospital, and we are now progressing the next stage of this transformation with the implementation of a second community frailty SDEC service at West Cornwall Hospital. We are also one of the first health care systems in the country to have established a mobile x-ray care service to enable rapid delivery of x-ray diagnostics in out of hospital settings including in patients homes to provide rapid assessment without the need for patients to unnecessarily attend ED or other hospital settings to reduce avoidable demand on ED and hospital services, and to support patients to remain in their own home for as long as possible.
RCHT has established two formal provider collaborative arrangements to support the sustainability of health services in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and across the wider Devon and Cornwall Peninsula. The first of these is a provider collaborative with the other Acute Hospital NHS Trusts across Devon to identify opportunities to support fragile Acute Hospital Services across the Peninsula and to enable transformation to support the financial sustainability of Acute Hospital Services, enabling care close to home where possible and sustainable.
The second collaborative is with Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust who provide Community Hospitals, community health and mental health and learning disability services. This collaborative is designed to support the sustainability of health services within Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly and to facilitate care close to home where possible and sustainable. Supported by this collaboration, we have established 3 dual Executive Director roles including the Chief Nursing Officer, Chief People Officer and our Chief Digital Information Officer to enable shared Executive roles and to facilitate integrated services.
These Dual Executive roles are members of the Boards of RCHT and CFT and have been important steps in helping to accelerate the partnership opportunities between both organisations.
Sustainable Healthcare
RCHT has delivered a balanced financial position for each of the last 3 financial years and has also supported the delivery of a system balanced financial position in each of those years. We are one of the small number of health and care systems nationally to have an agreed balanced financial operational plan for 24/25. As a system we have developed a clear medium term financial plan setting out the steps we need to take to continue to deliver our services within the resources provided. Our system financial delivery over the last 3 years has enabled our system’s historic financial deficit to be removed, and we have also received capital financial incentive funding in this year to reflect the agreement of our system’s financially balanced plan this year. These financial successes have been achieved through significant organisational and partnership working and provide a clear financial basis to support our strategic intentions.
However, the operational and financial environment for all providers and health and care systems is a very challenging one. With the growth in demand being experienced across the NHS, driven by factors including demographic changes including an aging population, our ability to continue to deliver within our system’s resources will be directly determined by the speed at which we can reconfigure our services to provide the most sustainable services and to address the underlying health inequities which are driving the increasing demand.
Research & Development (R&D) at RCHT
We have a well-established R&D Department at RCHT with over 85 dedicated research staff imbedded within speciality areas as well as over 300 active and recruiting research trials taking place across the Trust.
Research active Trusts have better patient outcomes, provide cost efficiencies, and attract and retain staff. RCHT is committed to further develop its research profile to maximise on these benefits. Our Research Strategy will ensure that RCHT continues to build a foundation of evidence-based practice so that patients receive the best care available and become early adopters for proven innovative treatments across the wider patient population. The Trust also have significant ambitions within its strategy to achieve University Hospital Status and deliver a Cornish Medical School in collaboration with academic partners. This will place RCHT at the forefront of modern medicine and support the wider Trust vision of providing ‘outstanding care to one and all’.
Our vision and values
