The NHS Trust of the University Hospitals of Leicester was created in April 2000 with the merger of the Leicester General Hospital, Glenfield Hospital and Leicester Royal Infirmary.
For 2007/08, the Trust has maintained its excellent rating for Quality of Service issued by the Healthcare Commission.
University Hospitals of Leicester is one of the six biggest NHS trusts in England with a budget of over £600 million per annum and 12,000 staff. It treats in excess of 1 million patients per annum, delivers 10,000 babies a year and provides the largest emergency service (admissions and ED attendances). It has one of the best records in the country for cardiac care and also specialises in kidney disease, cancer and vascular surgery. Its research programmes in cardio-vascular science, stroke medicine and diabetes are internationally renowned.
The trust was created in April 2000 from the merger of Glenfield Hospital NHS Trust, Leicester General Hospital NHS Trust and Leicester Royal Infirmary NHS Trust. It was originally led by Philip Hammersley CBE (Chairman, 2000-06), Dr Peter Reading (Chief Executive, 2000-07) and Dr Allan Cole (Medical Director, 2000-10).
University Hospitals of Leicester achieved the highest possible ranking for service quality from the Healthcare Commission five years running - '3 Stars' in 2003/04 and 2004/05 followed by 'Excellent' from 2005/06 to 2007/08. This is the best five year record of any multi-specialty teaching trust in England, and followed a remarkable turnaround from zero stars in 2002/03 (associated with an administrative error relating to waiting lists for minor surgery), which the Leicester Mercury described as 'zeros to heroes'.
In May 2008 new chief executive, Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, joined the trust from Kings College Hospital. In 2008/09, University Hospitals of Leicester's Healthcare Commission rating slipped to 'Good'.
University Hospitals of Leicester is applying to become a Foundation Trust.
Famous quotes containing the words university and/or hospitals:
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)