Contents
We are delighted to present the Velindre University NHS Trust strategic plan which sets out:
- Who We Are and What We Do
- Why We Need a New Strategy
- Our Purpose and Vision
- Our Strategic Goals for 2033
- How We Will Work Towards 2033
We set out:
- Our objectives for 2023 - 2033: what we want to achieve
- How we will achieve it: the key actions we will take
- How we will know we have got there: the measures
Who We Are and What We Do
The Trust was established in 1994 and is one of 12 statutory health organisations in Wales. We are responsible for providing a number of services:
Velindre Cancer Services
Non-surgical tertiary oncology services: we are a specialist treatment, teaching, research and development centre for non-surgical tertiary oncology services to patients from across South-East Wales serving a population of approximately 1.7 million.
Welsh Blood and transplant Services
A range of essential and highly specialised services including the collection and production of blood and blood components to treat patients; and supporting the transplant programmes through the Welsh Transplantation and Immunogenetics Laboratory services. This is a national service supporting the 3.3million population of Wales.
NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership (NWSSP)
We host NWSSP who provide a wide range of support services to NHS Wales including procurement, recruitment and wider back office services.
Health Technology Wales (HTW)
We host HTW which is a national body working to improve the quality of care in Wales. It collaborates with partners across health, social care and the technology sectors to identify, appraise and advise on the adoption of technology or models of care to ensure an all-Wales approach.
Why Do We Need a New Strategy?
Across all of our services and the wider health and care system, it is clear that things are changing:
- We serve a growing and ageing population, with a range of local challenges relating to health, ill-health and inequalities, requiring us to better coordinate and join up care.
- People’s expectations are changing with the reasonable expectation that our services will be personalised to their needs. Our buildings, facilities and green spaces are a vital part of patient, donor and staff experience, are pivotal in improving mental health and well-being and will play an important role in developing thriving and resilient communities.
- A Healthier Wales sets out a clear path to move from ill-health to well-being. Reducing the environmental and health impact of our estate is a priority for NHS Wales.
- Technology, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, provides healthcare with the opportunity to transform the way we deliver services, increasing the value for patients, donors and our partners in a more sustainable way.
- We need to reduce carbon emissions, drive energy efficiency, reduce plastics and waste, improve air quality and use resources more efficiently to move from ill-health to well-being.
- The climate emergency and need to develop a sustainable approach to living on the planet; a global challenge we need to respond to.
Our Purpose: To Improve Lives
Our Vision: Excellent Care. Inspirational Learning. Healthier People.
Our Guiding Principles: the Well-Being of Future Generations Act (2015)
Everything we do will make a contribution to developing:
- A prosperous Wales
- A resilient Wales
- A healthier Wales
- A more equal Wales
- A Wales of cohesive communities
- A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language
- A globally responsible Wales
How We Will Work:
- Long-term
- Integration
- Involvement
- Collaboration
- Partnership
Our Strategic Goals
By 2033 we will be recognised as…
- Outstanding for quality, safety and experience
- An internationally renowned provider of exceptional clinical services that always meet, and routinely exceed, expectations
- A beacon for research, development and innovation in our stated areas of priority
- An established University Trust which provides highly valued knowledge and learning for all
- A sustainable organisation that plays its part in creating a better future for people across the globe
How Will We Achieve Our Vision and Strategic Goals by 2033:
We set out our objectives which will support the delivery of our strategic goals
Strategic Goal 1: Outstanding For Quality, Safety and Experience
Our objectives are to:
- Provide harm free care, the best outcomes and a great patient and donor experience
- Listen to and learn from the experiences patients and donors have of our care to drive continuous improvement
- Be an organisation which consistently demonstrates Compassionate Leadership in everything we do
- Be recognised as ‘Outstanding’ by Health Inspectorate Wales, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority and UK and international peers for the services we provide
We will achieve these by:
- Implementing the requirements within the Health and Social Care Quality and Engagement Act
- Implementing a quality and safety management framework which will drive every action we take and decision we make
- Delivering the national programme for Compassionate Leadership across the organisation
- Continuing the development of a quality-led culture which drives the highest standards of care and safety, and ensuring all staff live the ethos that ‘the standard you walk past is the standard we set’
- Getting the basics right by improving access and transport to our services: reducing the need for journeys for care and improving car parking and public transport if you have to visit us
- Continuing to develop an open, transparent, just and learning culture which allows excellence to flourish
- Developing a value-based healthcare programme which supports us in reducing unwarranted clinical variation and inefficiencies, using best practice as our benchmark
- Providing staff with education, training and support to develop improvement skills and knowledge which drive quality and safety standards
- Developing our performance management framework to report our performance on quality, safety and experience in an uncomplicated way to ensure everyone can easily see how we are doing
- Benchmarking the quality, safety and experience of our services nationally and internationally to identify learning and improvement
Strategic Goal 2: An internationally renowned provider of exceptional clinical services that always meet, and routinely exceed, expectations
Our objectives are to:
- Achieve nationally and internationally recognised standards of care which keep pace with emerging evidence
- Be a trusted and influential partner across Wales to deliver great local health services which meet the needs of the public
- Become a ‘Centre for Excellence’ and leading provider across the UK for the highly specialist services we deliver
- Become a system leader in our areas of expertise nationally and internationally
- Identify a range of new services that the Trust could deliver to improve quality, experience and outcomes across Wales
We will achieve these by:
- Delivering services which comply with all statutory and professional standards
- Implementing the National Clinical Framework to continuously improve the quality, experience and outcomes of the services we provide
- Implementing our patient,donor, and citizen engagement strategy to continuously hear what people need and what they value from our services
- Co-designing models of care in partnership with people from all parts of the community, with the aim of improving access to our services and providing care at home or close to home wherever appropriate and desired
- Working with the community and our partners to reduce inequalities in healthcare
- Rapidly adopting evidence-based research outcomes which improve patient and donor quality, safety and experience of care
- Developing and implementing our clinical and scientific strategies which will set out what services we will deliver over the next ten years; focusing our offer on delivering services that we believe we can truly become leading experts in
- Agreeing with our Local Health Board partners and the Welsh Government the system leadership roles we will undertake to maximise the value we can add for our patients, donors and partners
- Working with the Welsh Government and other partners to plan, fund and deliver world class buildings, facilities and technology for patients, donors and staff
- Benchmarking our performance nationally and internationally to see how we perform against our peers and to identify learning and improvement areas
Strategic Goal 3: A beacon for research, development and innovation in our stated areas of priority
Our objectives are to:
- Deliver world class research, development and innovation to improve tomorrow’s care
- Accelerate the implementation of research and new discoveries to improve our patients’ and donors’ experiences and outcomes
- Prioritise research, development and innovation that is clinically relevant and patient and donor centred
- Build a sustainable culture of multi-professional research, development and innovation involving the whole organisation
- Publish and promote research of the highest quality which achieves UK and international recognition
We will achieve these by:
- Implementing our research, development and innovation strategy which sets out a prioritised programme of work in cancer, blood and transplant services
- Giving every donor, patient and carer access to the latest research
- Advancing new treatments, interventions and care by increasing new studies locally: widening access to early phase/ solid tumour advanced therapies and integrating novel research into clinical studies
- Building a culture of curiosity where research, development and innovation is an ‘Always Event’ involving all employees in the Trust, empowering the staff to challenge the status quo and make it better
- Increasing the number of lead investigators and clinical academics within the Trust
- Recruiting honorary entrepreneurs and academics whilst also developing intrapreneurs, with a flow of staff between our partner organisations on exchanges to attract and retain world class talent
- Creating a cadre of blended professionals to promote knowledge exchange with an impact on the improvements of patient outcomes
- Establishing exciting work programmes with our local health and academic partners at Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Swansea University, University of South Wales and Trinity St. David’s University
- Increasing our research, development and innovation infrastructure to keep pace with our ambition. This will include:
- the tripartite research hub with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and Cardiff University
- providing world class facilities via the Welsh Blood Service Infrastructure Programme, the new Velindre Cancer Centre, Velindre@ research hubs at University Health Board partners and the Collaborative Centre for Learning and Innovation
- developing the Library Service into a sustainable Trust-wide Evidence Centre
- Generating reinvestment income through partnerships with industry for commercial research, development and innovation
Strategic Goal 4: An established University Trust which provides highly valued knowledge and learning for all
Our objectives are to:
- Deliver inspirational teaching which is enhanced and informed by world class research and professional practice
- Create a supportive and enriching learning environment for all of our learners
- Provide a learning experience that learners rate as excellent
- Be rated as a high quality provider of education and learning nationally and internationally in a number of priority areas
- Raise the profile of the University Trust on a UK and international stage
We will achieve this by:
- Developing a high quality education and training programme aligned to the needs of our local, national and international partners
- Appointing visiting professors and Professors of Practice to the Trust and aligning their work with priority areas of industry and business partners
- Attracting academics with national and international reputations
- Fostering partnerships with leading organisations from around the world in our stated areas of priority
- Equipping all learners to make the best use of physical and digital learning resources, and utilising Cardiff as a living classroom
- Increasing our investment in a range of funded strategic initiatives to ensure staff have the time and environment to undertake learning. We will invest additional funds in:
- supporting our workforce to undertake MScs and PhDs
- supporting our workforce to take up Fellowships
- supporting our workforce to obtain professional, technical and role specific qualifications and accreditations
- providing research and learning opportunities for students from our university partners, the industry and other sectors
- Developing unique learning opportunities in specialist areas including the Velindre School of Oncology and Welsh Blood Service Modernising Scientific Careers programme
- Developing a marketing and communications strategy which attracts learners to our programmes and raises the profile of the Trust
- Identifying a range of partners and collaborators to enhance our offer and brand across the globe
Strategic Goal 5: A sustainable organisation that plays its part in creating a better future for people across the globe
Our objectives are to:
- Be recognised as a leading NHS Trust for sustainability nationally
- Become an anchor organisation in the communities we serve to enhance their economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being
- Be a carbon ‘Net Zero’ NHS organisation by 2030
- Support the transformation from ill-health to well-being across Wales
We will achieve this by:
- Developing clinical service models which support sustainability e.g. more care at home
- Implementing our sustainability strategy
- Applying the principles of the circular economy into our business processes through design, procurement, re-use and lifecycle
- Providing a comprehensive education and learning programme which provides staff, patients, donors and partners with learning opportunities to embed the 5 Ways of Working of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act and supports them to make positive behavioural changes (‘a little step every day’)
- Implementing our carbon reduction plan which will see us achieve Net Zero and transition to renewable energy for our services and facilities
- Investing in a range of refurbishments and new buildings which will support our carbon reduction and healthier buildings and healthier people approach. These include:
- major refurbishment of the Welsh Blood Service, Llantrisant site by 2026
- construction of a Radiotherapy Satellite Centre at Nevill Hall by 2024
- construction of a new Velindre Cancer Centre by 2025/2026
- Implementing an attractive approach to agile working for our staff which reduces avoidable travel, improves well-being and offers the potential to support money going into local communities
- Improving our offer for staff, donors and patients travelling to and from our facilities on foot, bike and public transport
- Using our procurement activities and NHS Wales Shared Services capability to drive a sustainable approach, and achieve wider ethical and social value in areas including local employment and prosperity, carbon reduction, anti-slavery and unethical practices
- Working with partners and the local community to identify ways in which we can deliver wider benefits and value to society through employment and apprenticeships, the use of our buildings and facilities as community assets (e.g. local schools and charity group using them, arts programmes), becoming an anchor institution in place making and procurement to maximise the reach of the Trust within the Governments Foundational Economy
Aligning Our Services
How Our Support Functions Will Support the Delivery of Our Ambitions
Our People: Being an Employer of Choice
Our objectives are to:
- Develop and Support a Skilled and Developed Workforce: an employer of choice for staff already employed by us, starting their career in the NHS or looking for a role that will fulfil their professional ambitions and meet their personal aspirations
- Plan and Sustain our Workforce: have the right people with the right values, behaviours, knowledge, skills and confidence to deliver evidence based care and support patient and donor well-being
- Grow a Healthy and Engaged Workforce: within a culture of true inclusivity, fairness and equity across the workforce. A workforce that is reflective of the Welsh population diversity, Welsh language and culture identity
We will achieve this by:
- Implementing a Health and Well-being Framework across the Trust setting out clear and measurable standards to help drive improvement
- Implementing our education strategy to support staff to grow professionally and offer internal and external pathways to gain experience and knowledge
- Developing our talent management process to support career pathways for staff
- Developing our data, information and insight to support the embedding of our workforce planning process: supporting new ways of working for our staff
- Implementing an agile approach to working
- Targeting an increase in bilingual recruitment to grow our Welsh speaking workforce
- Improving the way we celebrate success ensuring our staff feel highly valued for the amazing work they do
- Growing the Trust’s Inspire Leadership and Management Programme
- Working with our partners in both academia and the industry to ensure the best leadership and management offers are provided for staff including coaching, mentoring and provision of masterclasses
Digital Excellence: connecting people digitally to create better services and wider benefits
Our objectives are to:
- Provide resilient digital services which support excellent care
- Seamlessly connect patients, donors and partners with our services
- Become a data driven, insight led organisation where people have the right information, at the right time, all of the time
- Secure our data and information through an effective approach to cyber security
- Create a digital culture of innovation and knowledge sharing that supports the delivery of world class services
We will achieve this by:
- Implementing our digital strategy
- Constantly evolving our IT infrastructure and security arrangements
- Implementing a digital transformation programme to drive benefits and create new forms of value
- Developing a digital literacy education programme to support patients, donors, carers and our workforce to improve their digital literacy
- Increasing the speed of development, deployment and functioning of new technologies to increase our productivity
- Working with the public and Centre for Digital Public Services to champion and accelerate digital inclusion
- Developing our role within the Digital Intensive Learning Academy to increase the digital skills and knowledge of our staff
- Identifying opportunities to join digital accelerator programmes and initiatives
- Revolutionising our business intelligence capability to provide data, information and knowledge to the right people at the right time
- Build digital partnerships with partner organisations, academia and digital providers to create value in health, wealth and well-being
Collaboration and partnership: creating more value from our resources
Our objectives are to:
- Create strong and effective partnerships with health and social care organisations, public service and third sector partners to create greater value and benefit
- Act collaboratively to deliver local, regional and national priorities
- Develop strategic commercial partnerships with organisations to foster innovation, economic growth, health and well-being
- Develop a culture which embeds partnership, collaboration and inclusivity into our organisation’s DNA
We will achieve this by:
- Working with our local health boards and wider partners to deliver our set of shared strategic priorities
- Working with local health boards to improve the commissioning arrangements that ensure services are needs driven and outcome focused
- Developing our role in the Regional Partnership and Public Service Boards around a set of shared goals with our partners
- Expanding our relationship with our volunteer workforce and local community groups to support us in delivering excellent core services and other forms of social value e.g. keeping people active, community cohesion, improving health and well-being
- Developing a culture of collaboration, partnership and innovation through a number of practical steps:
- Providing staff with information, support and ‘how to’ guides for developing collaboration and partnerships to make success easier to achieve
- Identify innovative ways to fund partnerships and make seed funding available to get things started
- Develop expertise in commercial and intellectual property areas of business to protect our ideas and maximise the benefits we gain
- Investing more to increase our capacity and capability to develop and manage partnerships with strategic commercial partners and Universities
Providing great places for people to visit and work
Our objectives are to:
- Provide an estate which enables the delivery of high quality clinical services
- Provide a safe and high quality estate which gives patients, donors, staff and partners a great experience
- Provide healthy buildings which support and enhance individual well-being
- Minimise the impact of our estate on the environment
- Maximise the benefit and social value our estate can provide to our staff, patients, donors and communities we serve
We will achieve this by:
- Continuously engage with the users of our estate to understand how it can be designed, adapted or enhanced to better meet their needs
- Developing an estate that places human values at the heart of design and embrace opportunities for arts and culture within such spaces
- Investing additional resources in the maintenance of the existing estate to maintain a Category B
- Implementing our estates, digital, workforce and sustainability strategies
- Providing a range of accessible alternative methods of travel focused on walking, cycling, public transport and electric vehicles
- Identifying innovative ways to adopt renewable energy sources to service our requirements
- Identifying facilities we can share the use of with other public bodies and wider partners
- Working with the community and partners to identify how we can open up our buildings, facilities and land to be used as community assets
- Working with partner organisations in arts and culture to seek mutually beneficial opportunities for artistic collaboration across our services
- Delivering a number of transformative capital programmes which have sustainability at their centre of design:
- refurbishment of the Welsh Blood Service building in Llantrisant by 2026
- a radiotherapy satellite centre by 2024
- the new Velindre Cancer Centre by 2025/2026
Investing wisely to create the greatest value
Our objectives are to:
- Secure the most value from every pound we invest
- Increase our income and available resources to support the improvement of the quality, safety, experience, outcome and sustainability of our services and assets
- Use our funding and investments to contribute to the seven well-being goals set out within the Well-Being of Future Generations Act
- Maintain our position as a financially sustainable organisation
We will achieve this by:
- Developing high quality financial systems which provide us with the intelligence to support prudent investment of our resources to maximise outcomes and social value
- Seeking additional capital investment and income to improve services for patients and donors through the adoption of the five ways of working, investing for the long term and creation of wider value beyond the organisation’s direct benefit
- Delivering increased and sustainable levels of efficiency and effectiveness through transforming clinical service models and eliminating unwarranted variation
- Developing better commissioning and contracting arrangements with our local health board partners to deliver value from existing and additional investment
- Working with partners in ‘place making’ to secure wider social value from our collective resources in health, social services, education, housing etc.
- Seeking out strategic and commercial partnerships to diversify our income streams
- Securing continued charitable and philanthropic funds to supplement our NHS core funding
- Using the collective scale of the NHS procurement and supply chain to deliver increased value from our funding and support our work in sustainability, poverty, inequality, unethical practices and climate change
How Will We Measure Our Progress?
We will track a range of measures at an organisational level to help us deliver our stated ambitions.
Our Care
- Access to our services
- Never Events
- Serious Untoward Incidents
- Clinical services: key clinical performance measures and outcomes (benchmarked with our peers)
- Patients and donors that rate their experience as excellent
- Staff who say they would be happy for us to provide care and services to a member of their family
- Ratings by external regulators and professional bodies
Our Team
- Diversity of our workforce
- Staff who rate us as an excellent employer
- Staff who would recommend us as an employer to their family or friends
- Our contribution to a vibrant Welsh culture
Our Learning
- Impact of our research
- Staff who are routinely involved in research, development and innovation
- Staff who are lead investigators
- Impact of our innovation
Our Wider Contribution to Our Communities and Country
- Welsh language speakers in our workforce
- Carbon emissions
- Carbon footprint
- Net bio-diversity gain: value of natural capital
- Air quality on our sites
- Goods and services procured locally within Wales
- Sustainable development assessment: our contribution to communities
- Social value: our contribution to society