It is a member of the Shelford Group, an informal organisation of ten leading English university teaching hospitals.

The hospital is a partner in one of 6 designated academic health science centres, Cambridge University Health Partners, formed with Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge.

The hospital has a number of high-specification facilities, equipment and resource to support all of this activity, including the recently expanded Cambridge Clinical Research Facilities offering 24/7 clinical beds to support Phase I and Phase II studies.

The trust was one of 26 responsible for half of the national growth in patients waiting more than four hours in accident and emergency over the 2014/5 winter.

[13] In September 2015, the trust was placed in special measures after Care Quality Commission inspectors deemed it inadequate.

[15] At the end of March 2017, the trust was confirmed as one of four additional NHS Global Digital Exemplars; joining the twelve announced in September 2016.

[17] Roland Sinker, the chief executive, warned staff in November 2021 that patients could be sent to hospitals in Birmingham or London if it could not tackle an ongoing bed crisis and that he was ‘anxious and scared’ that its main acute site was under so much pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic in England that it was "ceasing to function as a hospital" as 150 beds out of 900 were out of action.

The trust has installed 6,000 new PCs and 395 workstations on wheels with a battery pack and 24 inch widescreen monitors capable of moving all around the hospital.

[23] It was the first Trust to receive the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Stage 6 Award in November 2015 for the effective use of technology in providing high quality patient care within a year of going live, the fastest in the UK.

[24][25] In June 2018 the trust announced that it was abandoning its £140 million contract with Hewlett Packard Enterprise which was supposed to run until 2020 and had signed a new contract with Novosco, a Belfast based company, for the introduction of new hardware, IT infrastructure, Wi-Fi, and cyber security at a cost of £107 million.

[26] The trust made a Private Finance Initiative deal in 2007 for the building of a £76 million elective care centre.

He said he had raised concerns about staff shortages and the impact on patient care several times to his line managers.