South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Who we are
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is the largest hospital Trust in the Tees Valley and our core purpose is to provide acute, community and tertiary services with the highest quality of patient care and experience.
The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough and the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton deliver over 1.5m patient contacts per year, with an additional 1.2m patient contacts undertaken by our community services.
We are a Major Trauma Centre, Regional Cancer Centre and a Tertiary Centre. We are registered with the Care Quality Commission with our last inspection providing a ‘Good’ rating. We are committed to providing patients with the very best care across all of our services.
We also provide care in our local communities and in people’s homes, including community and district nursing, and services from the following hospital sites:
- Redcar Primary Care Hospital
- East Cleveland Primary Care Hospital in Brotton
- Friary Community Hospital in Richmond.
We are a major employer within our local area and a key system leader within the health and social care system that serves our communities. Our Trust is a partner in the Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) and member of the Clinical Research Network for the North East and North Cumbria, which aims to recognise the ideas originating from the region’s health service, turning them into treatments, accessible technologies and medicines to enable patients to benefit from better healthcare.
Our journey so far
Getting good NHS services is the most important thing to more than 1.5 million patients, carers and families in the Tees Valley, North Yorkshire and beyond who depend and rely on them. It is the most overriding thing to everyone who works at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust too.
Since the autumn of 2019, we’ve been empowering our clinicians to take the decisions about how we manage our resources and deliver care across our hospitals and services – supported by our amazing scientific teams, administrative, support staff and volunteers.
This is important – not just for our local communities in Teesside and North Yorkshire but for patients across the north east and beyond who rely on us as a specialist centre and regional major trauma centre.
We are an anchor tertiary provider – delivering world-class cancer, cardiothoracic, spinal, cochlear implant, neurosciences, gynaecology and urology care for patients across the region – and one of only three hospital trusts in the UK operating three robotic surgical systems. Our major trauma centre sees half of all trauma cases in the North East and Cumbria.
Our role as an anchor tertiary provider is also crucial in ensuring that specialist care is available to patients across our region and that health inequalities are not exacerbated in our local patient populations.
By enabling clinicians to come together to shape and deliver the care they want for their patients, we have been rated by our colleagues as the most improved hospital trust in the country since 2019 in NHS Staff Survey.
And in 2023, we became one of the fist hospital trusts in a country to achieve a CQC rating increase to ‘Good’ since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Our Leadership Improvement and Safety Academy (LISA) has been recognised as outstanding by the CQC.
Alongside our commitment to research and education, our position as one of the country’s highest ranked medical training organisations, and as a dedicated apprenticeship employer, characterises our commitment to our people and communities.
How we deliver
Our strategy will be delivered through nine enabling strategies and plans.
Our vision
Our clinicians lead by the way they manage our limited resources and deliver safe, quality care across our hospitals and services – aided by the experience, professionalism and skills that exist across our clinical and support areas.
Our mission
Safety and quality first: As a clinically-led organisation the safety and wellbeing of our patients, service users and colleagues – underpinned by our commitment to clinical research, innovation and training – is at the heart of our mission.
Our values
The values of our nurses, midwives, doctors, allied health professionals, scientific teams, administrative, support staff and volunteers has been instrumental in helping our services meet the challenges presented by COVID-19 and our continued recovery from the effects of the pandemic.. They are the words we want our patients, service users and colleagues to be able to use to describe how it feels to receive care or work in our hospitals and services.
- I am respectful because I listen to others without judgement. I promote equality and diversity and treat others as they wish to be treated. By holding myself and others to account I demonstrate my professionalism and integrity to my colleagues.
- I am supportive because I acknowledge the contribution of my colleagues. I support my colleagues and our trainees to develop themselves in order to deliver the best possible care to our patients and families. Being part of a team requires me to be honest, available and ready to help others and myself.
- I am caring because I show kindness and empathy to others through the delivery of individual and high-quality care to our patients, families and my colleagues.