The NHS on the Isle of Wight is a unique organisation. We are the only NHS organisation (officially we are known as a Primary Care Trust or PCT) in England which both commissions all the health services required by our population and provides a broad range of these services including mental health, learning disability, community, primary care, an acute hospital and prison healthcare services.

Our budget for 2009/10 is around £240m and we are one of the largest employers on the Island with over 3,000 staff. This does not include our award winning GPs and their colleagues in the community - pharmacists, dentists and opticians who are independent contractors. Along with the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, where many of the staff are seconded from the NHS, we have just been named as a Top 100 healthcare employer. The NHS provides a wide range of careers and training.

Our vision is that everyone will have an equal chance to a long and healthy life and that the NHS on the Isle of Wight will be 'Locally valued, clinically safe, and financially sound'. We aim to achieve this by:

Ensuring excellence in patient safety, clinical standards and patient experience
Making tangible and measurable improvements in the overall health of the Island people
Developing as an organisation that works productively and effectively both in partnership and with our own staff
Living within the resources we are given while creating some headroom for investment through developing services which are sustainable in the long term

Through our strategy for commissioning services we aim to reduce health inequalities; add life to years; and maintain sustainable and viable provision of services for the Island.

During the course of a year:

Over 36,000 patients attend our Emergency Department at St. Mary's
Around 14,500 operations are carried out
The GP out of hours service is contacted by over 27,000 people
Over three quarters of a million tests are carried out in the Pathology Department
Around 1,100 babies are born at St. Mary's
We support over 800 people to quit smoking and many to eat well and exercise more
Volunteers donate over 45,000 hours to the NHS
Our ambulances clock up over 400,000 miles
Over a quarter of a million meals are served to patients

Every year the health service is set targets by the Government and we are achieving the targets in the majority of areas including:

98% of patients visiting our Emergency Department are seen, treated, admitted or discharged within 4 hours
Patients are seen and treated within 18 weeks of referral from their GP
Controlling infection such as MRSA and Clostridium difficle
Our ambulances arrive on time - indeed we have the only ambulance service in England which is achieving the most challenging of the targets
Cancer patients seen and treated urgently

We work closely with key agencies such as the Isle of Wight Council, HMP Prisons, and the Rural Community Council (RCC) representing voluntary organisations. We also work closely with others during emergencies such as the Police, Fire and Rescue Service, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Air Ambulance Service. We are active participants in the Island Strategic Partnership (ISP) and fully support the Eco-Island vision.

Our recent successes include:

Being in the top 20% of healthcare organisations for the provision of urgent and emergency care
Satisfaction amongst users of health services is good with hospitals (81%), GPs (91%), dentists (85%) and pharmacists (97%) all higher and better than the average across neighbouring counties
Adult mental health services on the Isle of Wight are amongst the best in the country.
Increasing access to GP and dental services including the creation of new dental surgeries and the appointment of new dentists to enable 30,000 people to access an NHS dentist.

Many exciting projects are underway:

The £1.5m redevelopment of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) will provide mothers and their babies with a much improved environment located closer to the Maternity Unit for the care of seriously ill babies.
The new £3.8m Hospital Sterile Decontamination Unit (HSDU) will ensure that we stay up to date with the latest technology designed to ensure that infections are controlled and operations are safe.
Following recent agreement between local GPs who provide out of hours services and the management at St. Mary's Hospital a £1.8m redevelopment of the main entrance area at St. Mary's will create a 'single front door' with access to a new GP led health centre and the Emergency Department.
A £2.9m scheme to reduce the carbon footprint of St. Mary's Hospital and improve sustainability with the introduction of a new heating system.

If you would like to find our more about NHS Isle of Wight please visit our website at www.iow.nhs.uk or e-mail comms@iow.nhs.uk or speak to our Communications Team on 01983-552003.

NHS Headshot

Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust representative

Mark Price

Mark has been an NHS manager for more than 20 years and worked in London and Lincolnshire before joining the Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Trust as deputy chief executive in 1997. He was the first director to be jointly appointed by the Island’s Healthcare NHS Trust and Primary Care Trust in 2003 before spending a year on secondment to Portsmouth Hospitals Trust. He then returned to the Island to establish the Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust, launched in October 2006. He now has the post of Director of Corporate Affairs for the Primary Care Trust.