One Message from the chief executive
The Tooting connection
Dear colleague,
This month marks the 30th anniversary
of St George’s moving to Tooting and an
official opening by the Queen. Although
the history of St George’s stretches back
over 270 years; the last three decades
have seen both the trust and university
become very much part of the fabric of
life in southwest London. The hospital site
has developed significantly since 1980. The
Jenner Wing was added in 1984, St James
Wing in 1988 and in 2003 the Atkinson
Morley Wing was opened.
The trust’s specialist services have
also expanded in that time to include
neurosciences and trauma, stroke, cancer,
renal, paediatrics and cardiothoracic care.
At the same time our community services,
providing vital care to local patients,
have continued to develop most recently
through integration with Community
Services Wandsworth.
1980 was also the year when the popular
BBC sitcom Citizen Smith came to an end.
The show was written by John Sullivan, who
went on to write Only Fools and Horses. It
starred a young Robert Lindsay as “Wolfie”
Smith, an urban revolutionary living in
Tooting and self-proclaimed leader of the
Tooting Popular Front, the goals of which
Our values were “Power to the People” and “Freedom
for Tooting”.
Revolutionising care
Many colleagues will already know that at
St George’s Healthcare we have our own
goals which are designed to revolutionise
the care that we deliver to our patients.
Our stated mission is to improve the health
of our patients and our local community
by achieving excellence in clinical care,
research, education and employment.
Our values of excellent, kind, responsible
November 2010
and respectful have been designed to help
staff work to achieve this mission. Eagle-
eyed readers may have noticed that in
this issue of One Message we have added
special logos to help reinforce our values.
These values logos first appeared in the
October issue of the gazette and colleagues
will be seeing more of them around the
trust in the months to come.
I know that many of you already live our
values each and every day that you come in
to work. This dedication was reflected at the
annual Staff Achievement and Long Service
Awards dinner which I attended recently;
it is one event of the year that I always
look forward to and provides a chance to
celebrate the contribution of our staff.
There are examples across the organisation
of where we are delivering against our
values so let me give you just a few:
Excellent – a national audit has rated our
stroke services the best in the country.
Over 200 trusts in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland were assessed across
eight categories and the stroke service at St
George’s achieved the highest overall score.
Kind – we are very fortunate to have a team
of dedicated volunteers who, under the
leadership of Susan Taleghany, give of their
own free time to help staff and patients
across the trust.
Responsible – the trust has signed up to
the ’10:10 Climate Change Campaign’ and is
committed to cutting its carbon emissions
by at least 10% during 2010. This builds on
work we have previously done under the
Think Green banner and has reinvigorated
our environmental aims under the banner
of Saving Carbon, Saving Lives.
Respectful – The One Team, a joint
 partnership project between the trust and
Staff Side, is an innovative programme of
activity aimed at developing a culture of
improvement among staff in bands one to
four.
It’s time for everyone to play their
part
History will show that 2010/11 were the
years that set the future course for St
George’s Healthcare. The recent integration
with Community Services Wandsworth
together with our plans to become a
foundation trust have the potential to
ensure an exciting long-term future of the
trust.
However, we cannot afford to take our
future for granted given the current
economic environment. The coalition
government’s spending review, unveiled
last month, shows that the NHS budget in
England will rise year-on-year by 0.4 per
cent in real terms to 2014-15. To put this
into perspective the average rise in NHS
spending each year since 1948 has been
five per cent.
cause unease among many of you but
they should not come as a surprise. The
importance of our financial position has
been a consistent theme of my messages
to staff throughout 2010. However, I am
confident that colleagues across the trust
will play their full part in helping to ensure
that we achieve our objectives.
With this spirit of togetherness in mind I
would like to reflect on the recent passing
of Theodore C Sorensen, the former aide
to President John F Kennedy. His death
came close to the 50th anniversary of the
election of Kennedy as president of the
United States and a speech that remains
famous for its call for self-sacrifice and civic
engagement. I am sure that colleagues will
all be familiar with one famous line from
this speech. I have adapted this for the trust
in these challenging times and feel it is
an appropriate note on which to end. The
message is a simple one: Ask not what St
George’s can do for you, ask what you can
do for St George’s.
Regards

Against this financial background it is vital

we work to meet the trust’s cost reduction
programme (CRP) of £42 million. Some of
David Astley
the CRPs that we had set out at the start
of the 2010/11 financial year have already
Chief executive
slipped behind their original start date and
we are a long way from hitting our targets.
If we fail to deliver on our CRPs then our
plans to become a FT in 2011 will become
almost impossible to sustain.

Therefore, it is imperative that in the second

Our values
Our values half of this financial year that we all focus
our efforts to ensure that the trust’s CRPs
are achieved. This will be important for all
our projects from the large-scale electronic
rostering programme to those smaller
schemes which are being managed within
individual directorates.

I cannot stress strongly enough how

important our financial stability is to the
future of St George’s. Failure to become
a FT will almost certainly result in St
George’s Healthcare being integrated into
another trust, putting services and jobs
at risk. I know that these comments will