The Trust was formed on 1 April 2019 following the merger of City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust.

STSFT was rated ‘Good’ overall by the CQC in its first comprehensive inspection with community services rated ‘Outstanding’ and many other areas of outstanding practice noted across the organisation.

We are very proud to employ over 8,500 highly committed staff who excel every day in delivering outstanding, compassionate care to people within our hospitals, in their own homes and from our multiple community venues and outreach services.

We provide acute and community healthcare services to a core population of over 430,000 people living in and around the borough of South Tyneside and the City of Sunderland, as well as parts of County Durham and Gateshead.

We are also the third specialist centre in the region providing a range of services accessed by patients across the North East and Cumbria (and beyond) serving a population of almost 1 million people. 

Sunderland Eye Infirmary is the region’s specialist eye hospital and a regional centre of excellence for ophthalmology services. Our specialist services at Sunderland Eye Infirmary include a Cataract Treatment Centre, Glaucoma Unit and a Macular Unit, providing specialist care for thousands of people across the North East and beyond who have eye related health problems.

Sunderland Royal Hospital is one of three tertiary centres in the region providing specialist services to over 860,000 people across the North East and beyond. These include:

• Renal services – national leader in kidney care for diagnostic and interventional nephrology.
• Vascular and endovascular services, including open and endovascular intervention for aortic aneurysms and peripheral vascular disease and carotid surgery for stroke prevention. We are now the third major arterial centres in the North East.

We are a regional centre for bariatric surgery providing surgical weight management services to patients who are clinically obese.

We also provide many specialists in reach services from South Tyneside District and Durham Treatment Centre including ophthalmology and renal medicine.

We were one of the first Trusts in the country to be confirmed onto and complete the Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) programme with Sunderland being the first of the 16 initial Trusts on the programme to have completed its objectives and achieve GDE accreditation. South Tyneside part of the GDE fast follower programme and already a year ahead of schedule for accreditation

In May 2020 alone, a total of 1,813 vital signs readings were submitted by patients and 5% of these flagged red alerts which resulted in 133 video calls between the community nursing team and patients.