North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust held its Annual General Meeting, bringing together its members; executives and partners.

Gathering at the People First Conference Centre, members heard updates on the Pears School of Medicine, the trust’s financial position and the NHS 10 Year Plan.

West Cumberland Hospital, one of North Cumbria Integrated Care’s sites in Whitehaven(Image: Newsquest)

And in her speech to members, Interim Chief Executive Trudie Davies addressed the trust’s national ranking and detailed the ongoing improvement work at the trust.

She said: “Many of you will be aware that we’ve recently started in the NHS, the National Oversight Framework (NOF) and North Cumbria has been placed in NOF four, they run from one to five, NOF one being the best to NOF five, not being the best at all.”

North Cumbria Integrated Care (NCIC) delivers services for patients who are acutely unwell, operating the Cumberland Infirmary Hospital in Carlisle and West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.

NCIC was ranked 130 out of 134 acute hospital trusts in the national rankings, which were published by the Government for the first time earlier this month.

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust’s directors, who met at the Cumberland Infirmary Boardroom earlier this month(Image: Newsquest)

Ms Davies said: “A lot of work has been done to stabilise where we are as an organisation and we were never going to get above a NOF rating of three because of the financial challenges, which are well rehearsed, that the organisation faces. That means you can never get above a NOF rating of three.

“We have more than financial challenges to deal with and a lot of that is wrapped around our performance on long waiting times, whether that be when you attend A&E or whether that be elected and cancer care.”

It came as Ms Davies gave Chairman Steven Morgan’s presentation in his absence.

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust’s chairman, Steven Morgan(Image: NCIC)

She said that if he was able to attend he would have promised “a laser-like focus on that performance. We need to improve performance.”

Ms Davies said: “We know that long waits in patients do cause harm but actually we know if we treat people quickly and in a timely manner, they get better quickly and have less dependency on the health system because they can get back to work or back to their lives. So it’s really important that we reduce those waiting times.

“To do that, we are going to have to make some changes in how we deliver services and what services and how we deliver them, which we would only do in consultation with our staff, the public, our patients and our stakeholders to make sure we offer the right services to the people of Cumbria.”

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Members heard that in the past year, over £120 million has been secured to “improve services,” the funding includes redevelopment works at the Urgent Treatment Centre and the development of a Community Diagnostic Centre in Workington.

NCIC is also encouraging “a culture of speaking-up” as part of its improvement journey.

Ms Davies said: “History tells me, as it will tell you, when you ask people to speak-up, people will speak-up, they will tell you if things aren’t great and then you have to do something about it.

“The point is, collectively, we need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.”