Award recognises Medirest and Royal Surrey’s long-term collaboration | News

Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust and partner Medirest have achieved a Gold award in the HSJ Partnership Awards 2024, recognising their successful collaboration spanning three decades.

The partner organisations were announced winners in the long-term partnership with the NHS category of the HSJ awards at an awards ceremony on 21 March.

The award recognises the collaboration that launched in 1994 when Medirest took up the Trust’s catering contract. From that starting point, the partnership has expanded to incorporate a raft of other services, including cleaning and portering, pest and waste control, car park services and external security.

Last year the highly successful partnership was also awarded triple Exemplar site status from NHS England for portering, cleaning, and catering services.

The award-winning relationship has sparked a number of creative solutions to challenges faced by the Trust, including designing the Wellspring staff restaurant and wellness garden, adding QR codes to menus to catch and respond to patient feedback quickly, introducing Ella the robot for large floor area cleaning, adapting protective clothing for security staff, and implementing patient-centred training for all facilities staff.

Ross Dunworth, Deputy CEO and the executive responsible for the Trust’s Estates and Facilities services, said: “Our successful and progressive partnership working with Medirest has proved invaluable during challenging times for the NHS.

“We have been working seamlessly and effectively together for nearly three decades and in that time Medirest has helped us make key service improvements to benefit important elements of our patients’ hospital experience. The relationship has also allowed us to enhance staff wellbeing, which is obviously essential to the smooth running of our Trust.”

Stephen Munro, Medirest’s Contract Director, said: “We’re incredibly proud to be a partner with the Trust and we are looking forward to the next 30 years of working together. This award is not about Medirest or the Trust individually but about the excellent partnership between the two.”

Royal Surrey had two other teams who were finalists in the awards. Our Oncology team, working with EMS Healthcare and Lloyds Pharmacy Clinical Homecare, was shortlisted for the Best Community Services Partnership, recognising the work of its mobile chemotherapy unit.

Our Audiology department was shortlisted in the Best Elective Care Recovery Initiative category following a successful partnership project set up to recover the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks for the AVM service.