AT OUR meeting last week, the Board of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust made a significant decision that will go a long way to guaranteeing a bright future for our patients, staff and the Trust.

In May, we are optimistic that our Strategic Health Authority will support our nomination to become a Foundation Trust.

This will mean more local control to tailor our services to our patients' needs, and will help safeguard a range of healthcare services offered from our hospitals.

And importantly, it will make us directly accountable to local people through a Board, or Council of Governors, elected by members.

Members are patients, the public and staff who want to become more actively involved in their local hospital's plans.

To get there, we must demonstrate that we are on a sound footing.

I believe we can do this in a variety of ways.

I am confident that we have an organisation that is increasingly putting our patients at the centre of everything we do. Innovative initiatives, like last year's In Your Shoes' events in which patients met our staff to discuss the care and the experience they had with the Trust, are cementing this approach.

The invaluable information gained through In Your Shoes has been embedded in our clinical strategies for the next financial year and beyond, and is directly influencing our future direction.

For example, our patients told us they want clean and safe hospitals.

We are a long way towards this goal, with enviable infection control figures and full compliance with the Healthcare Commission's Hygiene Code. By enshrining patient safety in all we do we can only build on these achievements.

Patients also rightly told us they expect their time to be respected.

We are delivering on this by ensuring more than 90 per cent of patients begin definitive treatment with us within 18 weeks of referral by their GP.

This goal is on track to be reached more than nine months ahead of the Government's target.

We must also demonstrate strong local services. Our maternity services received a very positive report recently from the Healthcare Commission. In 20 out of 25 areas looked at, we were rated as acceptable or higher. This better performing' rating means we offer the best maternity services within a 20 mile radius.

But we are not, of course, all about services, we are a people-driven organisation. Which is why we welcomed the news that Sister Saw Bee Ang, based at Wycombe Hospital, was named as Special Care Baby Unit Nurse of the Year by Mother and Baby magazine recently.

So services that deliver for our patients, provided by committed and dedicated staff within an organisation managing its finances soundly, are key to our Foundation Trust application.

Already Trusts around us, like Milton Keynes, Heatherwood and Wexham Park and the Royal Berkshire, have become Foundation Trusts. With patients offered a choice of hospitals, it is vital that we highlight and build on our successes so that people have confidence in choosing and using the care provided by our hospitals. But, we must not be complacent, and recognise there is still some way to go as we build excellence across the board, and develop services in which we can all - our patients, our staff, the public and local media - be justly proud.

If the SHA supports our nomination, we may become a Foundation Trust as soon as next summer. We hope as many of you as possible will play an important and positive role in helping us achieve this by being an active part in our future.

Anne Eden, Chief Executive, Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust