Working with our partners

The North Mid and Royal Free London Partnership

At North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust (North Mid) and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL), we are strengthening our partnership to deliver better care for local communities and more opportunities for our staff.

The NHS is at its best when we work together to put patients first. Collaboration helps prevent ill health and speeds up recovery. Cooperation means quicker access to specialist teams and treatments. That’s why partnerships – which join up services for a local community – are at the heart of NHS plans for improving care

North Mid has been a clinical partner with the RFL group since 2017, working together to design and deliver care based on the latest evidence of what works best. Collaboration between our trusts has been further strengthened during the pandemic, helping our hospitals to maintain services like surgery and cancer care.

We are now uniting our efforts so we can do moretogether for local people than we can achieve on our own. This will bring benefits to our communities, our staff and the wider NHS.

Our partnership has a clear ambition, to bring:

  • reduced waiting times
  • more access to specialist care
  • the new surgical hub at Chase Farm Hospital, reducing delays for surgery
  • a louder voice to attract more health funding locally
  • a collective call for more community services wrapped around North Mid
  • more career and development opportunities for staff
  • more money for frontline services by reducing duplication in how we run our hospitals.

See a PDF version of our ambitions here.

Our closer partnership will support the services our patients use most. Enfield residents already visit either North Mid or RFL sites for most of their care. Between us, we cover almost all A&E visits, nearly 90 percent of inpatient and day cases and eight out of ten outpatient appointments. These figures are lower, but still significant, for Haringey residents. 

North Mid continues to have a strong future as a district general hospital with A&E, emergency surgery, maternity, paediatrics, critical care and specialised services designed for the needs of local communities. The same is true for RFL’s three main sites: Barnet Hospital, Chase Farm Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital.

But with so much cross-over we believe we can achieve more together, as one partnership, to improve health and care for the communities we serve.

Clinical partnership with West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust 

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust are clinical partners as part of the Royal Free London group.

Clinicians at both trusts have already been working on a wide range of projects to improve patient care. West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust continues to be a standalone organisation with its own board and leadership team.

Formal partnership with Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) 

The RNOH and the RFL have agreed a formal partnership to work together with a particular focus on practical collaboration at Chase Farm Hospital and Stanmore Hospital, to improve services for patients with musculoskeletal conditions. 

North Central London (NCL) provider alliance 

The RFL, with 10 other provider NHS trusts which cover acute care, specialist care, community services and mental health have agreed to form a single provider alliance for NCL. 

Building on the joint working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the group’s work will initially focus on NCL’s recovery from the pandemic, health and wellbeing of staff and COVID-19 research and development.