At the end of this incredibly challenging and unexpected year I would like to pay tribute to my WYAAT programme colleagues for their exceptional hard work and flexibility throughout this difficult time.  And I would also like to say a big thank you to the incredibly dedicated and hardworking teams we work with in all the WYAAT hospital trusts. Working together we have collaborated, innovated and transformed services to deliver care to patients across West Yorkshire & Harrogate throughout the pandemic.

Whilst it has unquestionably been an incredibly difficult time, it gave us the opportunity to work differently, breaking down traditional barriers to do the best we can to support our health and care staff and our patients. I am very proud of the WYAAT programme team who rose to the challenge of supporting our hospital trusts in their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, some members of our team returned to clinical duties on the front line, while we also continued to deliver service transformation programmes where it was practical and possible to do so.  The team accelerated work in several areas to support a partnership response to the pandemic across the trusts, including the roll-out of the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative image-viewing software, increased testing capacity across the Pathology Network and establishing the Nightingale Hospital Yorkshire and the Humber in Harrogate. Our programmes also secured more than £20million in funding to deliver improvements to hospital services across West Yorkshire and Harrogate in 2021.

This year has clearly demonstrated the benefits of collaboration and the strong relationships between our hospital trusts developed through the WYAAT provider collaboration.  Supporting each other with mutual aid, developing common approaches and delivering a shared responses to challenges have been the norm throughout the year.  This has also been the case more widely, throughout the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership as a whole, with providers, commissioners, local authorities and the voluntary sector working together for the benefit of our staff and patients.

WYAAT has recently been recognised nationally as an exemplar for provider collaboration, which is testament to the dedication, energy and passion of my colleagues in the programme office and across our provider trusts. I am hugely proud to work alongside them and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Matt Graham

WYAAT Programme Director