Our Strategy

The aim of our Strategy is to establish shared understanding and clarity for our workforce,
Board of Directors and partners about the Trust’s purpose, ambitions and priorities.

Our purpose is to improve the health and wellbeing of our patients, children and communities. As well as caring for patients when they are unwell, we can also help improve people’s health and contribute to the wellbeing of our communities through our services and how we use our resources.   

Our Strategy guides our decision-making about today’s priorities, ensuring they support our purpose and includes metrics for each of our True North Ambitions (the long-term outcomes we are seeking for our patients, children, communities and staff) so we can measure the progress we are making.  

We set clear, specific priorities and objectives for each ambition and goal, and track their delivery through the Board Assurance Framework and our governance and management processes.  

Our strategic objectives are:

Best Quality, Safest Care
  • Improve theatres’ safety. 
  • Reduce pressure ulcers and falls. 
  • Implement the learning from clinical investigations. 
  • Reduce medication errors. 
  • Improve patient communications. 
Person Centred, Integrated Care; Strong Partnerships
  • Increase elective capacity through theatre productivity and outpatient transformation to ensure no patients wait over 65 weeks for treatment. 
  • nitiate projects to build additional theatre capacity at Wharfedale and Harrogate District Hospitals. 
  • Reduce waiting times in the Emergency Department, with more than 76% of patients waiting less than four hours. 
  • Improve patient flow through the hospital, including out of hospital services to support discharge. 
        Great Start in Life
        • Develop a Children’s Public Health Services Strategy and operating model. 
        • Re-start implementation of Hopes for Healthcare, our principles for supporting children and young people in our services. 
        • Deliver the actions from the Ockenden Report into our own Maternity Services. 
        At Our Best: making HDFT the best place to work
        • Look after our people. 
        • Embed a culture of belonging. 
        • Embrace new ways of working. 
        • Growing for the future. 
        Read more about our strategy

        HDFT Impact – continuous improvement 

        HDFT has been using “lean” improvement methods for over 10 years and we’ve seen the improvements it can bring for patients and colleagues.  Our HDFT Impact programme was launched in 2023 and builds on this experience to put continuous improvement at the centre of our culture and ways of working.    

        It aligns improvement with our Strategy and enables improvement through coaching and support.  Through proven systems, routines and tools, teams can make significant, long lasting improvements as part of their daily work.  HDFT Impact mobilises all 5,500 colleagues in TeamHDFT to improve quality in everything we do.  We celebrate and encourage improvement by everyone and everywhere throughout the Trust.  

        HDFT Impact reflects our KITE values of Kindness, Integrity, Teamwork and Equality, and aligns us to our shared purpose to provide the best quality and safest health and care services.  

        Our vision for HDFT Impact is that all of our colleagues are able to say: 

        I understand our Strategy and how we are performing against our goals. 

        • I understand the contribution to the strategy that my team and I need to make using improvement techniques. 
        • I am able to deliver my work and improve how I do it as part of my day job.